Last week IIP sent out the press release with the exciting news that voice actors Carmen Seantel and Hel will be doing a duet narration of (many of) your favorite book in the series: That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

Here’s the official press release:

Raven Belasco’s That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story Performed In Duet Narration For Audiobook - IssueWire

Raven Belasco’s That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story Performed In Duet Narration For Audiobook - IssueWire

Issuewire • Immoral Influence Publications

IndieLife: let’s talk about press releases…

Since IIP is still such a small company, I am still doing things that I can’t wait to someday farm out to people who have gotten degrees (or at least a lot of practice) in how to do them.

Press releases are one of those things. My degree in Comparative Literature basically trained me in how to look at what the parameters of the writing assignment is, quickly study up on how to do them, and then, with some sweat and occasionally tears, write something that fits that style and has the required content. (This may not be precisely what the professors were trying to teach me, but it got me graduated cum laude, so… 🤷‍♀️)

Press Releases are what I consider technical writing. You have a word count and precise layout, you have information you must get across to the reader in the most optimal way for them to intake it, and you have a tone you have to hit. It’s no different than a white paper or a manual. (Both things I have been paid to edit, btw, so I know!)

If you are intent on doing that #indielife, you will be writing your own press releases (unless you have a particularly awesome friend) so a search on “how to write a press release” and some concentrate learning is in your future. My suggestion is to look at other author’s press releases and then shamelessly steal the layout and style.

It’s some of the least fun writing you’ll ever do…but somebody has to do it! Until, and I personally as an author and human being cannot wait for this, you can pay someone else to do it! 🫰🫰🫰

 Anyway, now that I come to think of it, I honestly don’t know what your favorite story in the series is! So please tell me!

RavenLife: How I got into photography

(This RavenLife was set in motion by Andrija Popovic. Thank you so much for asking, Andrija! If you want to suggest a future RavenLife section, just hit reply to this newsletter and tell me what you want!)

Growing up, I knew I was an artist. I had these pictures in my head that I wanted to bring out into the world. I took drawing classes, painting classes, pottery classes, you name it. I spent my childhood trying pencils, oils, watercolors, crayons, everything—but I never felt like I’d found my medium, my way of expressing myself.

When I was in freshman year, I was dating a sophomore named Kevin. Kevin was doing photography. Since I was dating him, I was obviously a free model. I was a competitive ice skater at the time, so Kevin asked if he could tag along to the rink. I said yes, and he got me stretching, doing my warm-up, and then running through my competitive routine.

Some nice images came out of this, but so much more important, I asked myself: “Why haven’t I tried photography?!”

It was too late for that semester, so I stole my mother’s Konica Autoreflex TC 35mm SLR and basically taught myself a lot of what NOT to do over the summer. I also got some great shots because it turns out that photography was MY medium, and even with no knowledge of how a camera works (beyond what the tiny Konica manual taught me) I was able to start realizing my artistic vision in a way that felt more “this is it!” than a pencil or paintbrush ever did.

The next September I was enrolled in photography class, and ended up having a Photography Major in high school. I adored the teacher, Mr. David Prifti, beyond words. He was the perfect combination of teaching vital technical skills and at the same time challenging your artistic self. I remember him looking at one project I turned in and saying, with evident approval in his voice, “You’re a real weirdo, Raven!”

Me being me, I immediately set out to “shock the school” with the most scandalous images I was allowed to make. (Pushing up against limits being a core part of my personality, which I’m sure comes as no surprise!) They would not allow me to do nudes, which I fumed about, feeling very censored and held down.

My very first self-portrait. I wasn’t an over-dramatic proto-goth or anything…

Prifti (all of his more serious students just called him that) started something I kept up for a long time: an annual self-portrait. Back when I was working with film, this was not the same thing as selfies are today. I at one point hung the camera from a tall pole and posed directly beneath it! But mostly, I figured out that I could use another person as a living selfie-stick by posing where I would be so that I could get focus and composition right, then trading spots with me and hitting the shutter for me. I did an annual self-portrait until I got a mobile phone, and now there’s selfies all the time. Less artistic ones, though. But I do have my own visual exploration of myself for each year before I got a mobile.

When I tell people I’m a photographer, they say, “What kind?” I hate that question! I started photography wandering around taking pictures of whatever I wanted to take pictures of: people, still lives, nature, event photography, political statements, all the things. The right image of anything is art, and I have absolutely zero intent to be boxed in to just one subject. I am a photographer of all the things I want to photograph, that’s what kind of photographer I am 💪

Shooting nature in the UK, 2016

Sadly, being a writer has pulled me away from being the semi-pro photographer that I was for years. I can’t put in the time on both building my career as a writer AND as a photographer, since both a very time-consuming if you’re not just doing them as a hobby. But I do a lot of my own product shots, and obviously all the promotional selfie stuff, so my photographer side is not totally abandoned 📸

My best photography story is when a friend and I snuck into the chapel on our college campus, and she climbed up on the alter and put the gaudily bejeweled cross between her befishnetted legs. I was doing long-exposure, multi-flash photography that night, and so I had to set up my camera on a tripod, with the shutter on “B” and held open with a rubber band, and then run around hitting my flash in various areas around the shot—and get it all done before the campus police found us! 👀

“Multi-Flash Sacrilege” 1996, Bradford College Chapel

No, wait, there’s a better story! In my first year of college, I was very excited that I could now work with nudes (this had been frowned upon in high school, for some reason) and apparently my enthusiasm was a bit intense for some. “Don’t let Raven approach you—she’ll ask you to pose nude!” became what was being said behind my back on campus. The upshot of that was that anyone who didn’t run away from me was the kind of person who was willing to do nudes 😁

“Classic Nude Pile-up” 1996, Bradford College Theatre

After transferring to U/Mass from the teeny Bradford College, I didn’t have the option of a Photography Major anymore, so I just did my own shoots and used the rentable school darkroom, lugging my own trays and stuff around with me. Eventually I made the switch to digital photography (although always missing the real darkroom and hoping for my very own someday), learning and loving Photoshop to point of attending annual “Photoshop for photographers” conventions 🤓, shooting three weddings, one pregnancy, and myriad fetish events around the world. I’ve had two shows, both in local coffeeshops—I love the idea of bringing art out into the world for people to interact with it while going about daily life. I would love to have my work in hospitals and other places it could bring comfort through art.

“Man of the Mind” 2026 (part of an ongoing project)

OK, I’ve got a novel to get back to writing! ✒️ See you in two weeks…and as always, be good or be good at it! 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

INDIELIFE: Finally ☑️ An Item Off That Indie Author Endless To Do 📋

As part of the Blood Eternal audiobook release, I’ve been getting reviews coming in. While chatting with one of the reviewers, he pointed out that it would be good to have the Glossary of the Am’r Language and Index of Non-English Phrases (that are in the end of the paperback and ebook versions of all the series books) uploaded to Audible.
This is something I’ve been intending to get around to for literally years, but it has just never has moved up the Indie Author Endless To Do List high enough to actually materialize 🙄

So I wrote back to the lovely fellow, thanked him for applying a boot to my ass in this regard, and now if you buy the novels on audiobook, those downloads finally come with them. (It should also work for you if you bought them before—but if you have any issues, hit reply to this email and I’ll shoot you over the PDF directly!)
Here is the review of Blood Eternal:

🎧 Listen to Blood Eternal at Audible 🎧

🎧 Listen to Blood Eternal at Amazon 🎧

🎧 Listen to Blood Eternal at Apple 🎧

RAVENLIFE: When Shit Gets Real, But You’re Not Fictional…

So far, I’ve written about stuff from my past. Today, thanks to a chest-thumpin’ idiot, you get brought into “a day in the life of Raven” as of last weekend. 🍿
For those of you who are new here, recently I’ve had to move in with my mom, as she is dealing with age-related memory loss. I haven’t been writing about it much— it would scare all of you off if I really went in-depth on how hard this is—but I am at the moment not living with my partner, Trent, and we are grabbing time together when we can get it.
Trent had come out to do a special weekend hike with Archie and me.
As we pulled into the parking lot, we saw a man. We didn’t see the off-leash dog he was letting just wander around the parking area until after Trent had almost hit it, due to neither seeing nor expecting a dog to be there. It’s understood that you don’t have dogs off-leash in the parking areas around here. (It’s also basic common sense, but common sense is not as common as one would prefer.)
As we exit the car, both upset about that close call, the man yells to Trent, “Whatcha doin’, TRYIN’ to hit my dog?”
This was not the correct thing to say, to either of us. Trent responded, “What are you trying to do? Get your dog hit by letting it run around the parking lot off-leash?”
“Oh, Big Man are you? That’s fighting words! You wanna fight?”
“Sure.” For those of you who don’t know Trent, he is my main resource for choreographing the fight scenes in my books. He is practiced in a number of martial arts traditions, and has never not been in-training since he was a little kid. Trent is not looking to start a fight. He is, however, perfectly happy to finish one, as a salutary lesson: “Don’t start none, won’t be none.”

Trent showing me some moves for That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story fight scenes

I at this point have Archie tucked under one arm, and have moved to a safe distance to give them room if they are going to get into it. I have my phone out, because Trent, being Black, will likely need evidence that he didn’t start the fight and did not use unreasonable force during it.
Trent meanwhile, has already prepared himself for the fight. He’s assessed the guy, guessed at what he will do for an opening move, come up with a plan of response, and decided the exact level of pain he’s going to put the guy through for being a loud-mouth bonehead who endangers his own dog. He is just waiting for the guy to take the first swing, because he is Black and the guy is white, and he needs to be able to tell the cops that he did not start the fight.
But the guy doesn’t want to fight. He just felt he had to be, as he put it, a Big Man, but he doesn’t really actually want to exchange blows. Every time Trent relaxes out of stance and starts to move away, the guy goes, “That’s right, walk away, you know you can’t take me on!” and so Trent obliges by getting back into a fighting stance and saying, “I’m not moving away. Come here and fight.”
Now, I’m on day three of a migraine and the meds are barely touching it, and I just want to get on with walking my dog and my partner in the woods. I’m getting tired of this nonsense. So, Archie still tucked like a football under my left arm, I walk over to the guy, hold out my right hand, and say, “Give me the leash. I’ll hold your dog so you can go fight.”
The guy’s eyes got wide. He was not expecting this, especially not of a “girl,” who should at this point either be having hysterics or begging her partner, “Don’t do it, baby!” But while Trent was assessing his opponent, so was I. This guy was no threat to Trent. He was profoundly unlikely to get even one strike landed. And Trent was not so amped-up that he was going to lose control and hurt this chucklehead too much. This was a “safe” fight for Trent, and while the guy would be injured a bit, it was a “safe” fight for him, too. I was just tired of the whole situation and wanted it over, one way or another.
As I made this offer, Trent got back into fighting stance. “So he thinks he’s a ninja?” the jackass asks me. “Yes, he’s trained in martial arts,” I reply. “Hand me the leash so you can fight now.”
But the dolt is clutching his leash. He really doesn’t want to fight now. Trent said that I probably scared the guy more than he did, at this point, because I was “calm and a bit condescending,” as he put it.
The craven imbecile was clearly not going to do anything, so I went back to Trent, put Archie down, and we started to get back to our rudely interrupted walk. “Oh, yeah, walk away!” the blockhead yells after us.
I’d had it. I turn around, look him dead in the eye, and say, “You’re an idiot. And you lost.” He stares at me, stunned into silence. I turn my back. Trent and Archie and I walk away.
We saw him two more times on the walk, and he hid behind a tree each time, in that nonchalant, “I just happened to step behind a tree right at this very minute, it had nothing to do with seeing you,” kind of way.
Trent informed me, grinning, that I’d just done “epic girlfriend shit.” Which is hilarious, because if I tried to be “epic” I’d have failed humiliatingly. I just had a headache and enough of that guy’s toxic masculinity.
Which, I realize, is in it’s own way what Noosh does to survive the am’r. Except I don’t get the timely quips. Instead of what I said, Noosh would have turned around and shot off: “Fight or shut the fuck up. And your dog deserves a better human.”

Proud of both of my guys!

But I’m not a quick-witted fictional character. I’m just a tired gal with a headache and no more fucks to give. The real winner of this whole story—besides my partner Trent, who will always stand up to a bully—is Archie, who stayed calmly under my arm the whole time (despite the fact that I know for certain that he senses all emotions around him strongly) and who just trotted off with us without any reactivity after it was over. My Archie-boy is definitely a fictional character come to life! 💝

OK, I’ve got a novel to get back to writing! ✒️ See you in two weeks…and as always, be good or be good at it! 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

I was going to put off the newsletter another week, but then it would throw off my usual schedule, so I decided, you know what, fuck it! Let’s just have the newsletter this week, despite the extra one last week! Go crazy like that!

And I do have a funny story to tell you. And it just happens to fit in the new section…

INDIELIFE: Who’s the bitch who got featured? 😁

Just as I was starting to pull together the Blood Eternal marketing stuff, I saw a note from Publisher’s Weekly Booklife, offering authors a chance to submit a piece for their new segment, “Behind the Story.” So one afternoon, when I had an awkward period of time between my mom’s appointments, I bashed one out, polished it up, and sent it over.

And then I didn’t hear back. Not even a confirmation of receipt. Ah well, I thought, I can find a way to recycle it. Such is the life of an indie author. We write stuff that gets rejected all the time, and eventually (and often unexpectedly) find a good place for it.

And then the next issue of the Booklife Report comes out. In the header it says, “A Vampire Series Evolves.”

“Godammit,” I mutter to myself, “Who’s this bitch author who got featured when I never even got a confirmation of having received my piece?!”

And I open the email…and they actually had run the piece I’d written and hadn’t bothered to let me know it was accepted and running in the next edition 😂

I’m still chucking about that. Who’s the bitch who got featured? Me, I’m the bitch who got featured 🦚

Go read the full thing HERE

And now, poll time! You know you wanna…

Don’t forget to go grab your copy of the Blood Eternal audiobook, which is available on Audible, Amazon, and Apple Books:

Where in the world is Caaisho?

I am indeed cranking along as best I can with Blood Depths. Caaisho has left Trinidad now—in less-than-willing company with our favorite Trinidadian pirate—and is now half-way across the Atlantic. I’m so excited about Caaisho’s part of the story. And Noosh’s. This is going to be such a good book!

RAVENLIFE: Ironical beginnings…

So, since I’m now feeling really free to talk about my life with a chronic illness (and thank you all again for wanting to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly—it means so much to me!) so I wanted to start in with an early story about becoming chronically ill.

At first, no one knew what was wrong with me. Almost one had heard of CFS, and the formal title of Myalgic encephalomyelitis was a decade off. When I first got sick, there was actually some senator somewhere in the middle of the country who was trying to put into law that CFS was hypochondria, not a “real illness.” My father informed me that I was “afraid of life,” and so I was staying in bed pretending to be sick so I wouldn’t have to face my fears. (I didn’t bother to tell him that since I was 17, all I wanted was to be out of bed—and out of the house!—and going on dubious and unwise adventures and living life to its teenage fullest.)

Being 17, I didn’t want to have some stupid, boring illness. And I certainly didn’t want anyone to know I had some stupid, boring illness. I’d been getting so many blood tests that I had track marks on the insides of my elbows, so I started wearing short-sleeve shirts to school and walking around with my arms twisted slightly outwards, in hopes that people would think I was a junkie, because that seemed “cooler” than having some stupid illness.

Eventually they ran out of blood tests. The last one was for Epstein-Barr Virus, which is one of the viruses that can set off ME/CFS (like COVID can end up as Long Covid). The doctor actually said to me, “Let’s hope it’s not this, because there is no cure for it…”

Ding! Ding! Ding! I won the door prize! A lifetime of uncurable illness! Woohoo! 🏆

You can imagine, since I thought being a junkie was more acceptable than being chronically ill, that I did not tell anyone about my diagnosis. I just showed up to school twice a week for half-days (when I could do even that) and tried to be as mysterious as I could be. “No illness here! I’m just inexplicably absent a lot. I’m skipping class! Yes! I’m a juvenile delinquent! Or becoming a vampire…! Something cool!” 😎

Meanwhile I did my schoolwork from bed, and my grades turned to straight ‘A’s—it turns out that I was both distracted by being in class and bad at tests, but if you gave me the books and left me alone I could basically teach myself. (I needed a math tutor, but that was it.) And since I was too sick to walk to the library, and I’d already read everything in the fantasy section of the home library, I hit the science fiction section and fell head-over-heels in love with Robert Heinlein and Samuel Delany and the genre in general. Indeed, I had always planned to write a science fiction novel, not a vampire novel at all! 🙄

Here I am about age 17 on a boat. How thematic and everything! You can see how sick I am, though… And really not sure about that scarf…

The amusing conclusion to this story comes from when I went to my five year high school reunion—to do what I called a “victory lap,” since I had moved to San Francisco, was at that point married to a woman, and felt like I was far, far cooler than the people who had bullied me in middle school.

I went to check in as I entered the high school cafeteria, and the gal looked up at me and said, ‘Oh! Raven! Hi! You’re the one who was chronically ill, right?”

So, despite all my best efforts to come off as a juvenilely delinquent junkie (which since I knew there was a rumor that I’d slept with every guy in the school*, seemed like a do-able rumor goal), somehow people had known all along about my damn illness. The thought that I’d hadn’t gotten away with being anything but sick shook me.

(*at the time I was having trouble getting a boyfriend, so the irony of that rumor was truly not appreciated. I felt that if I was going to be called a “slut,” I should at least have the enjoyable sexual experiences to go along with it.)

But I only stumbled for a second. Soon I was sauntering around the cafeteria telling everyone about my glorious life in sin-tastic San Francisco. In the end, the illness hasn’t kept me from achieving the “coolness” I longed for at age 17. I wish I could go back and tell that poor sick girl it was going to turn out OK, at least in that regard.

It’s been a few emails since I expressed my appreciation for you all. Thank you for staying subscribed, staying engaged, and staying supportive of my author journey. It’s because of YOU that I am able to keep bringing you the stories of the am’r. You are the bestest and I routinely brag that my readers are the finest readers any author could hope for 💝

OK, I’m going to now leave you alone for the usual period of time—and I really mean it this time! 😂 See you in two weeks…and as always, be good or be good at it! 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

You’re getting this newsletter a week early because today is PRESS RELEASE DAY for the Blood Eternal audiobook and I didn’t want you all to have to wait a week with this exciting news

Here’s the official press release

And here it is in pretty picture form, if you prefer:

Click here to see all the carousel

👉 Here’s the link to pre-order it on Audible! 👈

And this takes us directly into our new featured section:

Indielife: Why have you released it only to Audible???

Those of you who don’t use Audible/Amazon for audiobooks will notice that we didn’t do the release “wide,” but exclusively to Audible.

While we are only doing this for the first three months, there are very good (for some value of “good” 🙄) reasons to do so.

If you release your books as “Audible Exclusive,” you get paid out 70% of royalties. If you publish your audiobook “wide” (to all platforms) then Audible pays you a mere 35% of royalties. Now, you might think, “Well, the income from the other platforms will make up for that.” That’s what I thought, when I decided to go wide for the first three audiobooks I made…

However. It doesn’t work out that way in real life. The combined income from Libro.FM, Chirp, Overdrive/Libby works out to less than $30 twice annually, which just doesn’t come near to the income that Audible/Amazon yields.

So now we hit the ethical quandary place. My whole soul wants my audiobooks to be available in libraries, and through Libro, who supports indie bookstores. And in general I am anti-monopoly. So that’s what I want to do.

But if I do that, I don’t make enough money to pay off my investment in making good audiobooks. Making audiobooks isn’t cheap, and I have taken the most expensive path because I’m an audiobook person and I couldn’t make an audiobook I wouldn’t enjoy listening to. (And that has led to getting to work with Amber Fuckin’ Benson, which make it one of the best decisions of my life, as she has brought Noosh to life better than anyone else could.)

So, having started by going the ethical route, and paying the price for it, my publisher and I have decided to walk the “middle path” this time. We are going to start Blood Eternal out as an Audible Exclusive, and make the best royalties from the early sales burst.

Once that plateaus—as it sadly inevitably will—we will take Blood Eternal wide (and make a big fuss about it, so that people who have been waiting can ask their libraries to get it through Libby). My income will drop precipitously…but my soul will be happier about things 💖

And this is the thing about being an indie author. (Or, like me, someone who works with a small publisher who is willing to work with you about business decisions.) If you are an author with a bigger publisher, you have made the decision when you signed the contract that you are aligned with their ethics, and then you don’t have to think about it further. But for me, I am having to wrestle with ethics for every decision no matter how big or small. And that is really exhausting and frustrating—no matter what, you feel like you have chosen wrong every time.

So by going this middle road—start exclusive, then go wide—I am hoping that for once I will feel like I made the right choice as both a business woman and a person who holds her ethics strongly 🛣️

If you don’t fancy the idea of having to play this game with your livelihood, I strongly suggest you keep submitting your manuscript to agents and publishers and try to get trad pubbed. Indielife is all about these kinds of tough choices and frustrating outcomes.

Anyway, here’s me having a cupcake to celebrate!

No Ravenlife Segment today

I’m skipping the Ravenlife section today because I want to spend that time on working on Chapter 7 in Blood Depths, and I don’t think any of you will argue with that decision. But I do have a lot of plans for future features and honestly kinda excited about this new part of the newsletter—so thank you all for requesting it!

I’ll be back in two weeks with a more usual newsletter. In the meantime, if you are not an Audible user, feel free to email me if you want to be put on a list to be the first to know when Blood Eternal goes wide…

OK, I’m gonna go write! You go read the press release and/or pre-order Blood Eternal at Audible (if you use that platform) and then go be good or be good at it! 😘

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

Hey Fabulous Readers! 💖

The poll in the last newsletter was instructive: those of you who responded said that you wanted to know more about being an indie author, and more personal stuff about me. So I shall pay attention to your desires and restructure things a bit, going. I will start newsletters with the indie author section, and put the personal section beneath it, so you can easily get to what you want to read 😊

And hey, here’s a NEW poll!

INDIELIFE: I hate all of this…But new covers coming!

So the last six or so years have taught me that my books sell best at events/conventions/goth markets—basically, anywhere I can talk to the customers about the books. I have had exhausting but exhilarating days where I sold a book to almost everyone who walked past. So I know that the series can build an audience who is enthusiastic and excited for more. (This would be YOU. And thank you for that!)

However, Amazon sales have always been dismal, and continue that way. And as much as I hate-hate-HATE it, I cannot make it as a writer without the biggest bookseller on the planet.

I tried getting help two years ago with an Amazon marketing company. That was a serious waste of my time and money, and taught me a very real lesson that selling sprockets (or self-sealing stem-bolts) on Amazon is completely different than selling books. (Also, that company was very unprofessional and it was a deeply unpleasant experience.)

Last year I worked with an agency which was much better to deal with, who focused on helping authors who wanted to run Amazon ads. After six months, they had not moved the needle, and after kindly giving me money back, they shrugged and said, “Some books just don’t sell well on Amazon”

That was frustrating, because my books are a good, quality product, with covers that people adore, and there has to be a way to get Amazon readers to give them a try. I have redone the book descriptions, gone through every few months and updated the categories—this is a terribly important thing that no one tells you about, and Amazon keeps changing the categories and will actually penalize you if you choose the wrong ones. I have jumped through the flaming hoops to make A+ content (which I was assured would entirely change the situation. Spoiler alert: it did not.)

Two weeks ago, I finally found another company who helps authors with Amazon sales. And finally, I found people with knowledge of how Amazon works, and years of experience selling books there. (I wish I had found them years ago!)

After a somewhat brutal first meeting, I have learned that my beautiful and unique covers are not selling because they are not what people expect to see when they look for books in my genre. And I do not have their attention like I do people standing in front of my table at a vampire market—they are standing in line in the grocery store or watching TV, anything but give it their full attention. So my books at first impression need to look like something they want to buy.

Now I can hear you say, “But your books are cross-genre!” That is exactly what I said, too. It was explained to me that we are looking for the most “forgiving” genre readers. For example, science fiction readers will read a science fiction book with a mystery in it, but mystery readers won’t read a book with a space ship on the cover. While I am an omnivorous reader (and most of you are, too) that rings all-too-true for me.

So the new plan is to look at best selling dark fantasy books and see what their covers have in common, and get new covers for the series that look exactly like that.

It breaks my heart into tiny pieces, and goes against everything I believe as an artist—I want my works to stand out from the crowd, dammit! But I need to actually sell enough copies of my books to afford to keep writing them. So we are doing this (and more—stay tuned to this newsletter for those future items.)

For those of you who adore the Kwasi covers, do not fear. Now matter what else is done, I will keep selling the Kwasi covered versions in person, as they do very well in that context.

It has been a real kick in the stomach for me to hear all of that, and to know that I’ve been accidentally sabotaging my own sales by trying to offer something fresh and new (everyone always says the vampire genre is “dead”—so stop buying shit with the same damn covers already! ) but I do feel strongly this is the right direction for the series, at least in terms of increasing the readership. However, ugh, I still hate everything about it!

Where In The World…?

Now that I have made the announcement to you all about Caaisho, I can start tracking her movements through the novel along with Noosh.

This—um, infographic, I guess?—is slightly out of date, because I’ve just finished reworking Chapter Five, and Caaisho is a little further on her journey of meeting the am’r, but I really wanted to show where her story starts, so enjoy this hint, and there will be more in the next newsletter.

For those of you who have read Interview with the Vagabond King, you’ll remember that the infamous Boysie Singh is located in “Trinbago.” So could that mean that he makes a guest appearance in Blood Depths…? Oh, com’on, you know me! No way I could pass that opportunity up 😂

Anyway, if you haven’t read it, it’s still only .99¢ on Amazon. Although it doesn’t seem to sell well at that price point, so I’m thinking about raising it. Which means now is the best time to grab it, before is gets more expensive!

He went looking for a story. He found a terrifying and blood-soaked reality.

It’s 1960. Desmond Bangbourne has travelled to sunny Trinidad to write a story about the infamous pirate and gangster Boysie Singh, hanged three years earlier. After interviews with family and locals fail to turn up useful information, Desmond is given an address to visit…after dark. There he meets the person he was least expecting, and the story pulls him into a murderous and soul-shaking encounter with the am’r (the vampires’ name for themselves.)

a.co/d/02pPANC5

I’m still doing my “get to know your character by cooking the foods she grew up with” thing

And maaaaan, does it beat any other sorts of research 🤤

Instagram post

The above video is me making malai kismayo (Somali fried fish), curried cauliflower, and the delicious flatbread muufo. I cannot begin to express how delicious Somali foods are. All the recipes I’m making are from Soo Fariista / Come Sit Down: A Somali American Cookbook and if you cook, you need to get it.

Oh! In making the above reel, I discovered Somalian funk band Dur-Dur Band (who had an album called “Mogadisco” which I think may be the finest album name in all of time and space) so now I don’t just have new flavors for my mouth, but new ones for my ears as well 🎧

RAVENLIFE: You want in…❓

Since there are a bunch of new readers here, I should mention again that I have Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome and I’ve had it since I was 17, which was, uh, a minute ago 😉

I had written a whole long thing about my life history of having that chronic illness, but it was super depressing and I’ve just deleted the whole thing…

There is no way to write about ME/CFS without it being tedious and miserable, because that’s what having a chronic illness is. I have the damn illness and I myself can’t stand reading other people writing about it, so I can only imagine how much non-chronically ill people don’t want to read a whole long thing about it 🙄

How do I let you all into my life more, however, and not explain it? It shapes every decision I make, every action I take (mostly actions I don’t get to take, that is) and how I plan both my life and writing career

When I post images to social media, it’s of me getting out and living life. But then I don’t post the images in the 1-3 days following, where I “pay for” my reckless expense of energy—or spoons, for those in the know 🥄🥄🥄

I actually took a picture of me crashed in bed the other day, to see if I could make it interesting. As you see, it is not particularly interesting…but this is as “real” as it gets!

Who wants to see pictures of me in bed feeling exhausted and in pain for three days running? Absolutely nobody. A chronic illness is not something useful for social media, the way recovering from a broken leg would be. With the latter, you can post pictures of the cast being put on, the cast coming off, inspirational pictures of you at physical therapy, and then eventually, a tearfully grateful post about how you are back to normal and what a journey it was.

I don’t get that. My illness looks the same every day. I can post the things I get done despite it, but after those triumphs are an unknown period of recovery for having inevitably pushed too hard, and we are back to me lying in bed, feeling miserable, hoping the “crash” won’t last too long. There is no feel-good story to attach to my invisible illness, and to tell the honest truth would scare most followers away—if only from sheer boredom 🙄

So there is a real temptation to only let you into the pretty, shiny parts of my life, but I would like to actually be honest and show the whole picture somehow…

Anyway, I will be working on how to give you the “full Raven experience” in the coming newsletters, because the fact is that I have learned a lot about managing a chronic illness since I was 17, and I have managed to have a rich life around it/despite it. And I have lots of stories to tell!

Until two weeks from now, know that you are cherished readers, and I hope in all your endeavours you follow the helpful guideline of “Be good or be good at it!” 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

As you read this newsletter, I’m in the hospital: knocked out and getting an endoscopy. So, ha, suckers! You are still experiencing 2026, and I, for a brief but glorious couple hours, am entirely not experiencing it 😉

Obviously not much writing is getting done today. But it has been a good couple weeks for Blood Depths. Caaisho is really letting me know her voice—meanwhile, I’m not putting her through the easiest time, so it’s very kind of her to be willing to work with me at all 😂😭

I’m sure I’ll be talking about this endlessly once the book comes out and I’m doing the promotion for it, but it’s on my mind now so I’ll just natter to you about it for a while: Caaisho is going to have a very different to introduction to the world of the am’r than Noosh did, and I think it’s very important.

Noosh had a very romantic (or at least intensely spicy) intro to the am’r, because Sandu/Vlad was feeling all nostalgic and finally ready to fall in love. But that cannot be the way all my protagonists discover the am’r underworld.

✔️ For one practical reason, my series isn’t romance. Yes, there are romantic sub-plots, but these books are the story of the personal growth of the protagonist—in a personal-growth-or-die kinda way—as opposed to the story of a relationship.

✔️ For a more fiction-centric reason, because vampires are monsters. And while there’s no lack of monster-fuckers amongst us kee 😉, I never want to get sparkly and forget that we are playing in the dark with violent mass murders. (I would add “inhuman,” but the am’r are really “more human than human,” at least in terms of flaws.)

It’s really important to me to balance carefully between the awareness and respect that since the Victorian era, vampires have been the “sex monster,” the alluring and seductive monster (who is the cause for the paranormal romance genre existing in the first place) but because before that time, vampires were the personification of death, death come back to walk amongst us—and those older vampires had no romance about them at all—they were pure horror.

So as more characters come into the series, some need to experience this side first. It can’t be all sexy strangers in evening wear seducing you to the dark side. And actually, the decision to go in the “vampire pirates” direction for the next book helped ensure my choice, because a pirate’s life is rough and violent and they have chosen a symbol of death as their own symbol: the Jolly Roger (although of course that was not the only pirate flag, but it’s the best known.)

“When someone tells you who they are, believe them.” Land-based vampires might not be forthcoming about being Death-in-a-tux, but seawater vampires are going to be a different breed, just like us kee landlubbers and sailors.

Still cooking my character to life

The latest Somali recipes I’ve cooked up were Mishkaki, which normally is done as meat-on-a-skewer, but since there were no skewers at my mom’s place, worked perfectly as meatballs—and which will be on very regular repeat in this kitchen going forward 🤤

And Bariis Iskukaris, a rice pilaf which was somehow even better than the Mishkaki, and which my mouth is watering for just looking at this picture

I wish I could put a plate through the computer for you, because it was that good, and I would love to share the experience with you 🍽️

I keep promising exciting news, but then delays and other annoying parts of publishing get in the way. So all that thrilling stuff is still just over the horizen, for now, but I can’t wait to fill this newsletter with excited announcements as soon as I can. For now, Blood Depths is sailing forward at a respectable amount of knots, and really, that’s the most important thing 🚤

Until two weeks from now, know that you are cherished readers, and I hope in all your endeavours you follow the guideline of “Be good or be good at it!” 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

Before we start, I’ve been working on the backend of this newsletter to improve deliverability, as for some of you it’s been heading right into the ol’ spam filter. Please add rb@ravenbelas.co to your contacts, so you don’t miss any of the really exciting updates that are coming this month…

Hey Fabulous Readers! It feels like it’s been two months since the last newsletter, not two weeks 😂😭 But that aside, let’s get this rolling with an announcement! 📢

I have been considering pursuing graphic novel adaptations, and would love to speak with any professional comics artists who might be interested in discussing this project.

(I know what you are thinking, but sadly Kwasi is too busy already with other projects to take this on 😭)

So if you know any comic artists who would love to take on a dynamic vampire story with violence and history (and I have ideas on what to do with the spicy bits to make them compelling but not graphic), please pass along my info to them or theirs to me. Just hit reply to this email or send to rb at ravenbelas dot co

(This would seem like a crazy way to find people, but when I wrote about not being able to get the legal permissions to use “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” in my story “Finding Bela Lugosi,” it turned out that a wonderful reader of this newsletter was working in that industry and helped me make it happen. And I know that many of you who read this are fantastically talented in your own rights and have extremely cool friends, so from that perspective, it’s just the right place to start 😎)

Research with your tastebuds 👅

As you may recall from the last newsletter, the new character of Caaisho was announced, with some gorgeous art by Kwasi. Caaisho is a Somali-American woman who is about the come head-to-head with the am’r—and neither she nor the world of the am’r will ever be the same again…

(For those of you who might be worrying, never fear, Noosh is not going anywhere! Well, she’s continuing on the journey you last saw her embarking upon, in the story “Teeth Are Bones” in Blood Triad, but you will absolutely be seeing her )

Blood Triad: Stories in the Blood & Ancient Scrolls Series

Available in ebook, paperback, and audiobook, Blood Triad is a must-read for fans of vampire fiction and historical fantasy, especially those who value meticulously researched narratives that deliver immersive world-building, nuanced character dynamics and diverse perspectives, and thought-provoking explorations of love and resilience.

www.amazon.com/Blood-Triad-Stories-Ancient-Scrolls/dp/1960942069

Obviously, for Caaisho, I need to do my homework and do it well, giving the character’s backstory the respect it deserves, and I have indeed done a lot of reading over the past many months…

Instagram post

One fun part of the research is that I’m cooking dishes that Caaisho would have grown up thinking as the “taste of home.” I was excited to find Soo Fariista / Come Sit Down by Wariyaa: Somali Youth in Museums — high school students who explore cultural preservation and history through food.

During the nor’easter last Monday, I made my first dishes from the cookbook:

Digaag duban (spicy baked chicken) & Maraq baamiye (okra stew)

And canjeelo, a pancake-like flatbread that soaks up the sauces perfectly!

I need to work on getting the spirals in the bread, but I look forward to getting lots of practice because they are so delish!

Canjeelo reminds me to mention again that in the Somali language, the “c” is not at all like English. So our new character Caaisho’s name should not be said with a hard “k” sound at the front of her name. Here’s some perfect practice for you!

The first two dishes came out perfectly and I loved the flavors so much that I can’t wait to eat my way through the cookbook. For the canjeelo, I need much more practice, and I have found a more complex version of the recipe that I am going to try next time.

I won’t fill this newsletter with recipes, but if you want to try any of theses dishes without buying a whole cookbook, email me and I’ll send you that recipe, with my notes.

Blood Depths Update

Chapter One is finally done! (Well, at least pre-editing “done.”)

This chapter has been a helluva thing to write. First off, it is told by Caaisho, and it’s the first introduction to her voice, so it’s gotta be great—no pressure! 😂😭

Secondly, it must kick off the story with Action, Baby! I personally don’t need an initial action chapter to get into a book, but I grew up with Robin Mckinley and Susan Cooper and Tolkien, et al, and I don’t mind doing an “ease on down the road” into a story.

But all the advice right now is that your first chapter must kick the reader in the face for people to not put it on their “DNF” list, especially in the genre sandboxes I am playing in.

I first wrote this first chapter years ago, right after I finished Blood Eternal (which was still titled Blood Ad Infinitum, back in those ancient days.)

Then, well, I left The Terrible Publisher, and Blood Depths got set aside for years while I republished everything, blah blah, you know that story.

Then this past summer I finally picked it up again, heavily retooled the first chapter…and realized I was not ready to tell Caaisho’s story, and I had massive research and rewriting to do. I proceeded to jump head-first into that 🏊‍♀️

Last month I cut everything that was in old Chapter One, and started it from scratch. I wrote the chapter, finished it…and suddenly realized it was not an Action Chapter, but a very lovely “get to know the character” chapter. After swearing passionately under my breath (I was at one of my mom’s doctor’s appointments, in a waiting room), I selected the whole damn thing, moved it to Chapter Three (where it doesn’t need much rework to be perfect), and started writing Chapter One Yet A-Fucking-Gain.

I’ve lost count of how many rewrites that is, but honestly we are getting up into Blood Ex Libris territory, where I did a huge re-editing pass every time I got a rejection letter for five long years 🙄

Anyway, I am very excited about this shiny new Chapter One and I hope it will kick you in the face like THIS in a very satisfying way

I have two huge news items that I want to write about, but cannot yet, until they finish working through the stage they are in (publishing is such a frustrating business!) so I am going to keep this newsletter short, and go rework Chapter Three to being exactly the chapter it needs to be. So until two weeks from now, know you are cherished readers, and I hope in all your endeavours you follow the guideline of “Be good or be good at it!” 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

The results from the rematch of the Villaintine's Rematch are in:

“The Things I'll do to your heart, Valentine” is still the winner! I don’t know how to feel, because it is a really strong one (with its dark implicit threat and all), but I was quietly hoping that "If Evil, then why Hot?" might pull ahead, because I’m so very fond of it. But that is the voice of the people, and thank you so much for taking the time to vote!

I guess you all just love a dark implicit threat from a Hot Baddie…

Meet The New Character

I am so pleased to report that I can now go back to saying that “This newsletter is taking me away from working on Book IV, Blood Depths!” 😉

For those new to the newsletter (Hi there! 👋) my poor readers have been waiting for the next stage of Noosh’s journey through the world of the am’r for years now.

First I needed to leave my terrible old publisher and republish the books with IIP (which was a very intense and time-consuming learning experience), then my new publisher wanted some shorter works from me, so I wrote and published Blood Triad, Interview with the Vagabond King, Finding Bela Lugosi, and That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story, all of which pulled me away from Book IV. Then, getting the books into audiobook format kept me very busy with its own learning curve. Then, starting learning how to vend and the decision to try and have a very busy convention/event season last summer through Halloween was a serious pull away from the poor novel. Finally, just as I settled into making time for it, I’ve had to move in with my mom because of her health, and I lost a month of writing just taking her to doctor’s appointments and PT. (All of this while working around the limitations of my own chronic illness, which of course just makes it all so much more fun!)

But now it is February, I am a bit more settled in to life over here, and all I want to do is dive back in to Blood Depths 🌊 (Yes, pun intended.) Last week, as I was sitting around at a 2.5 hour appointment for my mother, I brought the laptop and started the work of reworking Chapter One. (Half the chapters I’ve managed to write have to be completely rewritten, which is too long a story to review here, but I promise the book will be immeasurably better for me doing this.)

This week I’m back at it, finishing up the new, improved chapter one.

I wanted the reason for all this work to be a big surprise to my readers, but that really only works if I can get a book out once a year. Once I’ve been keeping everyone waiting this long, trying to pull off that surprise no long makes sense, as by now I owe you all deeply informative updates on the process, to thank you for sticking around with me all this time 💖

So, I’m going to spill the beans! Noosh is being joined by a new character who is starting her own journey into the world of the am’r: Caaisho.

And as you see, my cover artist Kwasi has already been working with bring her to life!

Caaisho comes from a very different background than Noosh (obviously) and thus is going to respond to the am’r in totally different ways. Also, her introduction is not going to be all “meet-cute in the library” —after all, these are vampire pirates we are dealing with in this book! This is a bumpier road we are all going down together—because, say it with me, “Vampires are actually monsters and they don’t sparkle!” 🚫✨

I hope you’ll love Caaisho as much as you do Noosh. She is also a kick-ass strong woman, who will be bringing a very fresh attitude to dealing with the am’r and their vampiric shenanigans. Bagamil had wanted the am’r world to be shaken up a bit…but none of them are expecting Caaisho! (Here’s how to pronounce it, BTW)

Stay tuned to this channel 📺 to get to know this new character better as I finally get Book IV written for you 📝

The Winners Love Their Stained Glass Bookmarks!

Thanks to the first three of you who wrote in wanting to help me figure out shipping for the bookmarks—and I’m so pleased with how much you all love them 🔖💞

JT was kind enough to share this image 🥰

Happily, I found out that with the new small bubble mailers I bought, and how light the bookmarks are, that I can request it to be sent “First Class — non-machinable” and it costs less than a dollar to ship, so I can ship these for FREE!

Stained Glass Bookmark Blood Ex Libris

These gorgeous — and durable — acrylic bookmarks will take your reading experience to the next level! They are 5" x 1.875" — a perfect size for every book in the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series — or any other book in your collection. And they won't add any weight to your bookbag. The artwork is a "stained glass" FREE SHIPPING!

immoralinfluence.myshopify.com/products/stained-glass-bookmark-blood-ex-libris

Which I also can do if they are included in packages with books in, obviously! So if you have a friend who needs a signed copy of any of the books in the series (or if you are filling in your library), don’t worry that throwing one of these beauties in will up your shipping costs—they won’t!

Stained Glass Bookmark Blood Demands

These gorgeous — and durable — acrylic bookmarks will take your reading experience to the next level! They are 5" x 1.875" — a perfect size for every book in the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series — or any other book in your collection. And they won't add any weight to your bookbag. The artwork is a "stained glass" FREE SHIPPING!

immoralinfluence.myshopify.com/products/stained-glass-bookmark-blood-demands

And now for a word from this week’s sponsor:

Unbiased News Trusted by 2.3 Million Americans!

The Flyover offers a refreshing alternative to traditional news.

Tired of biased headlines and endless scrolling? We deliver quick, fact-focused coverage across politics, business, sports, tech, science, and more—cutting through the noise of mainstream media.

Our experienced editorial team finds the most important stories of the day from hundreds of sources, so you don’t have to.

Join over 2.3 million readers who trust The Flyover to start their day informed, confident, and ahead of the curve.

Join Free Today!

Vampires have tails!

My Bizarreries segment is still running over in Warren Ellis’ newsletter Orbital Operations. You should go check it out, because he has really excellent recommendations for books, comics, music, and really random cool shit. I actually buy stuff based on his recs!

Click here to read the whole thing

OK, I think that’s enough for this week—I know you’d rather I be writing the next novel, so I’ll hit “publish” and get back to my proper work! And until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

We started the annual Villantine's Day celebration with the Baddest Bad Guy of the series: Kurgan. As we ramp up to releasing the audiobook of Blood Eternal this year, I wanted to bring back the first batch of Villaintine's cards back for a rematch ⚔️

The winner last time was "The things I'll do to your heart, Valentine" -- and while I do love the threatening nature of that one, I also love both the other options just as much…

The results from the first round…

Also, there are a lot more readers of this newsletter now than when I first ran this poll, so I think it's only right that I run this one again, and let our new friends have their input on this deeply important matter. So here are your choices:

OK, now, here’s the poll. Let the best card win!

If you would like any of the images to send to friends, just let me know and I will send you the image, sized for easy email sharing 💌

I’ll announce the winner in the next newsletter, so stay tuned to this great channel 📺

Something kinda exciting has happened 💥

I now have a wee guest spot over at Warren Ellis’ newsletter (the comic book writer, novelist, and screenwriter), sharing “Raven Belasco’s Bizarreries” every week. His newsletter is one of the few I make time for regularly (along with Cecilia Tan’s and Tiffany Trent’s) so I recommend it highly to you.

This is the first one! Follow Orbital Operations to read the further ones!

Book Recommendation: Bound by the Blood 🩸🩸🩸

Two members of The Big Glasses Brigade 🤓

So, you all know my life has been subsumed by becoming the caregiver to my mother and needing to move in with her for the foreseeable future. But I did manage to get out yesterday to my salon for a very overdue haircut and color, and then after that to Cecilia's book launch, which was conveniently at my beloved Pandemonium Books

I just frickin' adore Cecilia. She is one of those people I can talk for hours with and then, when we have to go do other things, be sad because the conversation felt all-too-short.

Getting to be friends with Cecilia is one of the wonderful perks of having become an author. I've been a fan of C. Tan since, I dunno, college or right after? Pretty sure I found her in Blue Blood Magazine? This is a person whom I idolized from afar, and who I now get to be friends with?! I am a writer for many reasons ... but the perk of getting to hang out with authors you adore is not to be sneezed at 😉

There was real excitement about this book, which is described as “An Urban Fantasy BDSM Romantic Suspense“ (so if you like those things, GO GET IT)

It’s on the top of my to-read pile, but you don’t need my review, because Cecilia has only gone and gotten a review from Anne Muthafuckin’ Rice’s son (I’m what you could call painfully jealous) and I probably couldn’t do a better review than this anyway:

If you haven’t voted, scroll back up and do so! And until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

As you will recall from the last email, my entire life has been thrown up in the air, as I have moved in with my mom to become her caregiver as we try to get her to be able to walk again. More about that later in the email, but I have finally started to move my office into her home, and get set up to do direct sales from her house, and all the stuff an indie author needs 😮‍💨

So I can finally share our incredible new reader swag: Stained Glass Bookmarks!

Everyone’s favorite cover!

I am totally in love with this one!

I wanted to present these gorgeous bookmarks to you all set and ready to go, but I am missing one vital piece of information for our Shopify store: how much USPS will charge for shipping them! I’m used to dealing with getting the books out, but for orders of just these amazing bookmarks by themselves, I have no idea what it will cost 🤔

So it’s giveaway time! 🎁

The first three people who email me and request either the Blood Ex Libris or Blood Demands bookmark will get their order for FREE, and you’ll be doing me a favor, as I both need to find out how much they cost to ship, and also get to know the local post office where I’m now living.

🆓 Email me and tell me which bookmark you want – you might win a free one!

I honestly can’t tell which one I like best!

Argh! They are so good! 🤩

OK, that’s all the business stuff for this email, keep reading if you just want to keep up with me, or go on about your day 🙂

It’s been a FUCKING INSANE two weeks since last I wrote to you. I’ve moved from my house into my mom’s guest bedroom (and office!) The first week, she was in terrible pain, and everything was a huge, exhausting production, and I spent every moment of the day attending to her and trying to get her life back in some kind of order, as well as doctor’s appointments and PT.

At the end of the second week, due to some useful pain management, we are doing a little better. I am hopeful that I might be able to get a few hours each day to myself to write and do the other business of being a writer.

Never have I wished that the am’r would pay me a visit more. Seeing what aging is putting my mom through is terrible, and as rough and violent as the am’r world is, getting old as a kee is a billion times harder…

If you have elderly people in your life, give them a call and tell them that they are superheroes who kick ass each day in the face of all that an aging body is throwing at them, and how unhelpful health care can be, and how poorly society in general treats the elderly 🦸‍♀️

OK, that all said, next month is going to have some far more exciting emails coming out to you. Because our annual Villiantine’s Day has not been forgotten! And even more exciting news to follow that…!

Archie helping me write this newsletter on my mom’s sofa

Until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

Hey Fabulous Readers!

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the January newsletters aren’t going to be quite as thrilling as I had planned. My Mom had a serious health situation back in October, and she isn’t recovering well. I needed to pack up myself and Archie and move in with her for a while to help her with physical therapy and all the stuff she needs to get back on her feet — literally!

However, this means I’m away from my office, and most of my time and energy will be going to helping out my mom, not doing cool stuff for the books. So all planned stuff has been abruptly moved to February, and thus the two January newsletters are not going to be packed full with all the exciting stuff that was previously scheduled.

What this means for you is actually not bad news, because I will only have my laptop with me, and there’s not much I can do on my laptop except work on my next novel. So in between physical therapy sessions and stuff, I will be full steam ahead on Blood Depths, without other business distractions getting in the way. Since I know this is what you all want most from me, well, like I said, not bad news for you!

I was thinking about what to do with these two “lost newsletters” for this month while I was walking Archie this morning, and I decided what I could give you during this time-period was a couple “getting to know Raven” deep dives, since that’s always something you Fantabulous Newsletter Readers seem to enjoy.

But first, for those of you who were too busy to go grab the Sandu Xmas story, it’s ready and waiting for you — and has gotten some great reviews so far 🥰

Dracula's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Christmas: A Blood & Ancient Scrolls Series Holiday Story

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A delightful addition to the world of Blood Ex Libris!
I've been a fan of the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series since I first met Anushka crouching in the desert alongside a rodent. Getting to see where Sandu was in those endless months while she waited for him to fulfill the promise of their first tiny kiss is both satisfying and fascinating. This short story works well on its own, but adding it to the rich detail of Blood Ex Libris makes it all the better. It's a great hors d'oeuvre to pull you into the rest of the series, or a lovely lagniappe if you've already read the series.

www.amazon.com/Draculas-Terrible-Horrible-No-Good-Christmas-ebook/dp/B0GBYWZLSY

To start us off, here’s… How You Build A Bookworm

The seeds for my eventually being the writer you know today were planted very early. My mom read me Lord of the Rings when I was five years old, and it definitely gave me a standard of what to expect from reading, one that the public school system was not prepared for.

And I wanted to read! I came home crying from the first day of kindergarten, and my mom, very worried, asked, “What happened at school?” And I responded, “I didn’t learn how to read!”

Eventually, the alphabet had been banged into my brain, and I was reading sentences. I was not enjoying those sentences, because the school was giving me books like Gordon the Goat. Now, Gordan was not having The Battle of Five Armies or engaging with dragons, or visiting Lothlorien. As I recall, the highlight of Gordon’s day was eating a tin can. Not very compelling stuff.

The next family story about me and reading comes when my mom was called into school because I was failing reading comprehension, in first grade. They were giving us these cards with a story on one side, and questions about the story on the other side. I was answering those questions not just wrong, but like I was on drugs at that tender age.

Luckily for me, the first grade teacher cared about her students, and she had taken time to ask me some questions, and had figured out that I had read the stories on the front of the cards, thought they were deeply stupid, had rewritten them in my head to be better stories, and was then answering the questions based on my far superior narratives 😂

That was probably the last time my mom got called in for any issues with reading or writing, because it very soon became clear that I was having troubles with math, and that became the issue for the rest of my schooling. Since girls weren’t expected to be good at math anyway, nobody troubled to notice that I am dyscalculic. My mom was regularly told, “She can follow the logic of the word problems, then she just gets lazy with the math part.” 🙄

So math became something I dreaded and did as little of as possible, and reading became my escape.

I needed the escape because from second grade on, I was rated as a glasses-wearing nerd, a bookworm and general loser. I was picked last in gym, I had no friends, and basically was a living example of a character from Revenge of the Nerds.

The glasses really were the final nail in my social coffin…

I avoided dealing with those issues by reading every fantasy book that would hold still long enough, making no distinction between juvenile lit and adult fantasy novels. (Starting things off with Lord of the Rings had really ruined me for reading at my age level.) For a nerd, I got very bad grades, because during class I was often holding a fantasy novel under my desk and reading it instead of paying attention.

All of this, of course, was excellent preparation for being a writer later. I agree with Robert Heinlein that “Writing can be learned, but not taught.” I think the best thing anyone can do who wants to be a writer is to read voraciously, through all genres and styles of writing. Doing that not only exposes you to incredible examples of writing, but also shows you how to do every aspect of writing. More importantly, it also teaches you how NOT to do things. If you are reading something and think a character is intolerable or the plot is slow and uncompelling, well, there you go, there’s an example of how not to write! 😁

I could talk about this forever, but this is definitely long enough for a newsletter! For those of you who made it to this point, you are fucking amazing and I appreciate you 🥰

To all my readers, I hope your 2026 has started a bit more smoothly than mine, but at any rate, I look forward to being in contact with you twice a month in the year to come. Please feel free to respond to the newsletters (just hit reply, it’s that easy!) and chat with me about stuff. (There is starting to be a bigger readership, but I’m still at the point where I am accessible to you all. If my plans work out, there will come a day when you write to me and get a reply from my personal assistant who will tell you I appreciate your email but am too busy to respond personally — but since we aren’t there yet, take advantage of it 😉)

Until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

Since I know this story is what you want most, here is the link!

Amazon.com: Dracula's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Christmas: A Blood & Ancient Scrolls Series Holiday Story eBook : Belasco, Raven

This short Christmas vampire story combines the violence of Die Hard with the sweetness of O. Henry’s "The Gift of the Magi" for a perfect little holiday read.

www.amazon.com/dp/B0GBYWZLSY

If you want to know more first, here’s some info:

The story is set at the same time as the first three chapters of Blood Ex Libris, but from Sandu’s perspective—and yes, that means you get the full story of his being am’r-napped and tortured that he only glosses over at the Big Am’r Summit in the Rave Cave.

So the two main features of the story are: seeing the meeting of Noosh and Sandu’s through Sandu’s eyes, and then the rest of the story is just the kind of thrilling torture and revengeful action-y escape that you want from holiday films like Die Hard, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Red One, or Violent Night. It’s got “Christmas-specific torture” — you’ll need to read it to get it, but I think you’ll all find it a kick in the pants

Plus, for those of you who prefer less open-door spice, this story takes place before all that gets going in Blood Ex Libris, so it’s just violent vampire action, not sexy vampire action. All the other stuff you love is there, however: swearing in Romanian, historical bits, global settings — the usual BAAS recipe for am’r goodness.

I didn’t mean to write this story this year. My publisher has been demanding it for some time now, and suddenly, in late November, the story just started happening in my brain, so I had to rush to get it out on the page.

It actually fucked up quite a few of my other plans, hustling to get the story done and edited and published before Xmas. So please go grab your copy, because I really put the sweat, blood, and tears into this one!

(There was supposed to be a fancier cover — I found a great artist and we were totally on the same page about the cover art, but then there was a misunderstanding about the delivery date. So there will be a better cover in the future, but for now I just wanted to get it out to you all, and since it’s an ebook, the title page works well enough until the real cover comes along.)

(N.B.—if you are completely opposed to spending money on Amazon — which I understand and believe me I wish I could sell books without involving Amazon at all — email me and we’ll get you the story another way)

This is the final newsletter of 2025! 🕰️

I’m exhausted. It’s been an insane year! 😵

📅January — IIP republished Blood Ad Infinitum as Blood Eternal (may I never have to rename a book EVER!) and I got to give a talk with Cecilia Tan to Emerson College about being an indie author

📅February — the second year of the Villaintine’s Day vote. I love this tradition! But also my hand surgery that totally messed up my writing schedule for the whole year

📅March — Die Feen released their song about Blood Eternal “Mistakes”

📅April - May — the drama of writing Finding Bela Lugosi for the doomed Bauhaus anthology, then finding out the editor of said anthology was “not someone you’d want to work with” (I am putting this so very delicately!) and then the quest for getting the rights to use the lyrics from “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” from Bauhaus, managing to get it published for World Dracula Day; plus doing readings online and posting videos about vampires and being an indie author (And it’s still free online!)

Instagram post

📅June — going to the literal Sunnydale Hellmouth and getting to do a panel with the most fantastic Amber Benson

📅July — That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story makes a huge splash, and I attend Readercon for the first time, and totally fall in love with the convention

📅August — Yet another article published in Book Life by Publisher’s Weekly. And I finally get back to work on Blood Depths

📅September — I try vending at new places, like the Dark Forest Oddities Expo (not the greatest success) and the Vampfangs Vampire Market (a shockingly great success)

📅October — I have the best time ever on The Historic Lesbian Motifs podcast and of course Paulette Kennedy’s Live series, and vending at my beloved Pandemonium, as well as having my bestie over for carving punkins on Halloween

Instagram post

📅November — Back into Blood Depths, but get surprise-attacked by the Sandu Xmas Story that demands to be written…

Editing the Sandu Xmas story two days ago, with the vital assistance of Archie, of course!

📅December — trip to LA to finally record Blood Eternal with Amber Benson, publish Dracula’s Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Christmas, and working on a whole bunch of other exciting stuff for 2026

I feel like it was a pretty damn important year for both the series and for me as an author and person. Writing the shorter stories proved to me as a writer that I can really get a lot out of writing things that aren’t novels (I had done it before, but once I started writing novels those really took over!) and they also brought a lot of new readers to the series.

One of my goals had been to get out there and vend more and attend more conventions. It was baby-steps, but I think I chose mostly good places and they were worth the time, energy, and money. Because of my chronic illness, committing to three-day events is terrifying, and even a one-day event can cause me to lose a week after in recovery time. My next goal is to figure out vending in a state where I’m not already set up for paying sales tax, and just doing as many conventions as my health will allow.

My biggest goal for 2026 is just to get Blood Depths written as fast and as well as I possibly can. While I think all the distractions in 2025 were worthy endeavors, there are a lot of new characters I can’t wait for you to meet, and I really just want to sink back into novel writing, and just do the thing I love most about being an author—you know, write books—with less Other Stuff getting in the way.

Thank you all for sticking with me through another year of trying to figure out how to do this indie author thing. You newsletter readers are really the rock in the storm for me, and I deeply appreciate every one of you who takes the time to read each bi-monthly email, respond to polls and other questions, and support each story as it comes your way.

I hope you have a safe and joyful holiday season, and I look forward to sharing the world of the am’r with you in 2026! 🥂 And of course, until the next newsletter, be good or be good at it!😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

I’m going to throw in some vital news and updates up front here, but then the rest of this newsletter is a travelogue sharing my recent trip to LA. I’m only posting it here, for you my beloved newsletter readers

🎉First and most importantly, I can now announce that Blood Eternal has FINALLY been recorded in audiobook 🎉

Read again (and of course!) by Amber Benson. You guys are hearing it first! There will be more news about the audiobook in the coming weeks, but read the travelogue below to get the inside scoop…

The Sandu Xmas story is done in the first draft and just sent to the editor! I’m trying to get a cover happening while she does her thang…

I will be vending at the Pandemonium Holiday Faire On Sunday Dec 14

Be there or risk Santa’s Naughty List!

I’ll bring free hot chocolate and of course my red sharpie for signing your books ✒️ ⁠ If you are looking to shop local and indie, or just need to grab a few more items to check off your own Santa list, there will be unique vendors selling a variety of geeky wares: Illustrations, hand-made stuffed animals, bags, jewelry, dice, and so much more 🎁 ⁠ The faire will run from 12 PM to 5 PM. See you there! ✨

There are also freshly printed copies of That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story (for those of you who somehow don’t have yours yet) so if you can come down and get it signed in person, I’ll be wearing my ugly Xmas sweater and serving up free hot cocoa!

If you live too far away, order your signed copies here and I will get them out to you ASAP. If you order in the next couple days there’s still time for books to get there to be under the tree or by the menorah, or wherever you pile your prezzies 🎁🎁🎁

Don’t forget, ebooks and audiobooks make great holiday gifts, and they don’t require worrying about shipping times. All my audiobooks are up on Audible, through your other preferred audiobook provider, or you can buy them directly from me to own without membership issues

Special LA Trip Travelogue—Ride Along With Raven As She Goes On An Author Adventure

📆 Friday 5^th

Flying out from BOS to LAX. Flight very full, but people are in good spirits and friendly, and it’s almost like the government shutdown didn’t wreck such disaster on commercial aviation just a few weeks ago.

Looking forward to six uninterrupted hours of editing the Sandu Xmas story…

California here I come!

Just woke up from an accidental three hour nap! I can’t ever sleep on planes, but I had packed myself a big container of Turkey Day leftovers, and apparently, enough tryptophan, carbs and fats will give me a case of “the itis” that will overcome even my discomfort in flying! Good to know for the future…but now I’m kinda annoyed I only got one hour of editing in

***

It was a really smooth flight, got my luggage with no problems, and now ensconced with my friend Mija in Long Beach. I love this town. I have been promised Mexican food every day I’m out here, to make up for the lack of it in MA. Tonight is tacos, baby! 🌮🌮

📆 Sat 6^th

Ugh, jet lag is horrible. Spending the day resting before having to be “on” in the evening.

Picked up by Lore to drive over to the movie viewings and dinner. We hold a business meeting through the infamous LA traffic. Very productive that way, at least!

***
Home, too tired to keep my eyes open. What an amazing evening! Met and chatted with some really fun and interesting people, doing cool projects. Watched two classic horror films (Equinox and The Blob) and learned about how they were made. Delicious mango sticky rice after dinner! And I got to ride a little train!

I was introduced tonight as “Raven Belasco—she’s an accomplished author,” so I’m going to need you all to add that to my name henceforth: “Raven Belasco—Accomplished Author”

(Very happy the little terrier in The Blob didn’t die! I was so worried about them! Was very glad to find out it ran away. I hope it ended up in a good place eventually. Also, possibly more worrying: does climate change mean that The Blob is going to eat us all?!)

📆 Sun 7^th

Heading to the studio shortly to do the final recordings for Blood Eternal. Excited to spend time with Amber, and finally meet our recording engineer par excellence, Eli, in person.

***
Exhausted, in bed. Can barely hold my eyes open, but want to get down these memories…

Today was one of the best days of my author career. Met Lore at the gorgeous little recording studio where Blood Eternal has been being recorded. Amber and Eli were already inside, starting the pickups. Came in, hugged people, got to work. It was so much fun, and so damn impressive, being there for the process and getting to help out a bit with the last tricky pronunciation issues.

Then, the part I’d had some butterflies for: me getting behind the mic myself, to record the opening and closing parts of the book.

Back in college, I’d had a radio show (the Indigo Hours, where I played jazz and blues) and in my previous job for the language course company I ended up in their recording studio a number of times. But it had been a hot minute since I was trying to sound all professional with a mic in hand.

I did my best, enjoyed myself, and they say I sounded good (I’ll find out soon enough if they were just being kind!) and that was a wrap on Blood Eternal!

Me being a little too excited about “That’s a wrap!”

We celebrated with a meal at an amazing café, and sat and talked into the afternoon. The café had these insane gluten free waffles, and a lavender matcha, and so my part of the discussion was very much powered by caffeine and sugar.

Lore and I wandered around a bit after that, having a roving business meeting that included wandering around The Ripped Bodice, and ending up in a boba joint.

I’d run out of spoons some time ago by that point, and getting back to Long Beach included a stop at the wonderful Mexican place from the other night and getting more delicious tacos and mango agua fresca.

Passing out now 😵

📆 Mon 8^th

The original plan for the day got rescheduled for a future trip, so today was a “free day,” and in discussion with Mija, I realized what I wanted most was to sit in a café and write. (Technically, edit, but since I love all the stages of writing that’s all good.) So she suggested an appropriate spot called The Library Coffee Shop and after brunch and a visit to the dog park with her fantastic pup, we finally found ourselves ensconced there with caffeine (I got a fantastic latte called the Vanilla Goddess, and which lived up to the name!) and our laptops open, as we sat and wrote together.

Coffee and editing

The author at work

I really have the bestest friends 💖

Got almost all the edits in, and really enjoyed just sitting in a café and writing, which I never get to do back home because there isn’t a café in walking distance from my home now, and I really can’t see wasting the time driving to a café, when I could just get my computer fired up and get on with it. (Back when I lived in SF, I would walk Cairngorm down to the café to write—they adored him and made much of him—and after enough writing had occurred, I’d walk him home, thus getting both writing and walkies done in one swell foop.)

Anyway, since I was really wiped out from the previous two days, this was low-key day was just perfect.

It got even perfecter when some friends I hadn’t seen for too many years stopped by and we chatted for a couple hours like no time had passed at all.

Falling into bed so happy 😊

📆 Tues 9^th

One last thing to do, then I can go home to my Archie boy! Just “have to” have a brunch with the amazing Paulette Kennedy, whom I’ve been both idolizing and adoring from a distance, and now I can do so in the flesh!

Finally hanging out together!

We met for brunch at Lunetta and holy fuck, the food and drinks at that place are beyond perfect, and it was a beautiful place to sit and talk for a couple hours, about writing and personal stuff, and anything and everything.

I love talking with other authors. We can discuss the difficulties of dealing with Amazon or Ingram, the complexities of doing conventions, and all writer’s issues from which book layout software is best to laughing about our favorite bad reviews, and never get tired of these topics.

They say “never meet your heroes,” but sometimes it goes very right. I’ve met Jim Carrol and it was unforgettable, I met Samuel Delany and he was so kind to a star-struck college student who wanted to be a writer someday. And of course, Amber Benson! 💖 And today I met Paulette in person, and it was even better than our already wonderful online interactions 💝

On the redeye back east

At the airport, waiting for the redeye back to Boston, I got a killer massage and then finished up my leftover tacos and waffles while sitting at a nice table which charged my laptop.

Looking back over this trip, I feel so much gratitude. I have been taken care of by the kindest of friends. I have gotten to spend time with genuinely amazing people, having the best conversations. I’ve gotten to see my third “baby” Blood Eternal take the final step into being a Real Audiobook and be part of the process in the most fun way, and enjoyed networking and schmoozing like I was born to it. And I got to move the newest story along towards being ready to publish in my spare moments!

I love being a writer. I just want to do this for the rest of my life, please!

6 AM BOSTON. My eyes are really red! 😂

So that’s the story of the trip. Thank you for sharing that with me! 🥰 More news about the Blood Eternal audiobook forthcoming…

I will get out one more newsletter before the holidays descend upon us, to get you the link to the Sandu Xmas story ebook. Good luck with the holiday madness, and be good or be good at it!😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

💥Well, I have an exciting announcement to make—to my surprise 💥

Due to some other things that I still can’t yet announce [vibrates with frustration] there has been a thrilling development in the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series stories

For Supah Sekrit Reazins, the period of time in Blood Ex Libris where Sandu disappears out of Noosh’s life for three months (right in the first chapters of the book) needed to be told from Sandu’s point of view, giving the full story of his capture, torture, and escape for the very first time…

And, since it takes place over the holiday season, well, if Die Hard can be an Xmas movie, this story should absolutely follow in that grand tradition 🧨🎄🧨

So, the first draft of the story is going to be complete before Turkey Day, and after that it will be beaten into shape by my amazing editor, and gotten out in ebook form in time for holiday shopping!

This was, as you will remember from previous emails, so very much NOT the plan. But since I need this story pronto, and since it’s being very obliging and damn near writing itself, I am not fighting the utter reworking of my life and calendar.

Those of you who have been grumbling about how often Blood Depths has been put off will be grumpy with me, I understand. However, I cannot deny the results of the last newsletter’s poll, wherein those of you who want to see rough snippets were very vocal and undeniable.

FINE THEN, but only because you insist

So, I’m going to bow to your demands—which is not easy for me because I really prefer to present finished drafts of things and pretend they were that good from the very start —and start including “The Raw View” into newsletters.

Because of the few of you who didn’t not want the slightest bit of spoilers, I will always put that section at the bottom of the newsletter, and give lots of warning in advance.

The 100 Minutes War

My pretty boy and me, in our Viking-era finest. Be terrified!

I would have spent the whole weekend on the computer banging out the whole story in just seven days, except for the fact that I had made plans I couldn’t get out of for last weekend. The SCA event called the 100 Minutes War happens this November weekend every year—generally taking over my birthday, but that’s not a terrible thing, because it’s one of my favorite SCA events of the year, and I get to see lots of people whom I adore.

I didn’t get a lot of pictures this year, because I was showing my bestie and her husband around their first SCA event, and working with Archie to set him up for success in being a good and happy Service Dog, so I didn’t have the phone out much for pictures. However, here is Archie and me in our matching Viking garb in a rare quiet moment in the day.

It was very good to be off-screens for the weekend, and the later good whisky and good mead fueled naked hot-tub-under-the-stars party was really a quite perfect way to celebrate a birthday! (There were three people celebrating their birthdays in the tub, so we had a fair bit of celebrating to get through! And, no, there will be no pictures from that 😂)

But now, rejuvenated by getting as close to an am’r sort of weekend as one can get and still be kee (there was a huge pitched battle plus dubious decisions in a hot-tub 😂) I’m getting back to work getting you the stories you need! Indeed, I would already be back in the Sandu Xmas story if I didn’t have to write this newsletter, so I’m going to keep it short and get back to what you really want from me…

🆕 The Raw View 🥩 🆕

Here’s a touching reunion of dear old friends from the Sandu Xmas story (title forthcoming as soon as I can make up my mind)

⚠️⚠️⚠️ WARNING SPOILERS ⚠️⚠️⚠️ WARNING SPOILERS ⚠️⚠️⚠️

Now that you’ve had a taste of it, I hope you’re looking forward to the story as much as I am to sharing it with you! 💖

To those who have made it this far down, you are fucking amazing and I adore you! Until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

Post the insane Spooky Season events and marketing drive, it’s a time of fallowness for this author. Of course I’ll do a bit of Winter Holiday stuff, but the real highlight of my book promotion year has just passed, and now I want to just focus inward—and get that next novel closer to publication 💪

That means the newsletter this month are not going to be the high energy, thrilling affairs you’ve gotten used to. If what I am doing is research and pure creation, it’s not much to write about. Here are some pictures from the weekend, of me continuing the research part…

At the library, grabbing 2 more research books!

Diving right into the research, with my co-author helping!

But yeah, unless I share snippets of the writing with you, we’re not in a very dynamic place right now—from your point of view. From mine, I’m actually in the place I like best, which is just me and the page, and the words pouring out of my mind onto the page.

Where, sadly, they won’t come out perfect the first time, but will require lots of editing—and sometimes being deleted in chunks and completely reworked. But I’m a very weird writer, and I actually enjoy the “polishing” process as much as the pure creativity part, so as far as I’m concerned, all the best parts of being a writer are ahead of me, this month.

There’s a bunch of new readers to this newsletter—warm greetings to those of you who signed up at the Pandemonium Spooky Geek Faire! So I thought for this newsletter I’d go back and tell the story of how Blood Ex Libris came to be in the first place.

I knew I’d wanted to be an author all the way back in 1st Grade. (Although it was “author-illustrator” at the time. Sadly, reality has forced me to admit the fact that I cannot draw images the way I can draw with words.) In case you were wondering, this “what do I want to do when I grow up moment” came in between “paleontologist” (which since I couldn’t say my “l”s yet was said as “paweontowogist”) and “the Goddess Athena” (I apparently thought it was the kind of job that would have openings—which turned out later to be the plot of Fred Saberhagen’s excellent Books of the Gods fantasy series, so I was not the only one thinking about that!)

I wrote stories. I had “published” my first book by then. It was about the legend of the phoenix, and it was called “The Firebird,” and I did both the story and illustrations in Crayola marker. “Publication” was being displayed in the local library. I was deeply proud.

I was constantly working on stories after that. I always had a story I was working on, but the novels never got more than a few chapters in.

When I was 17 I became sick and never got well again. I was finally diagnosed with ME/CFS, but before I ever got a diagnosis I had found one of the things that would help get me through, and that was science fiction. I started by plundering my parent’s library, then whenever I was well enough I dragged my unwell ass to the local library and brought home huge stacks of books, which I used as pure escapism from my physical reality.

It was then that I first read Robert Heinlein and Samuel Delany. Both of those writers made me decide, “I can really do this!” and I started writing a science fiction novel.

The first iteration of the science fiction novel that I will actually finish someday…

That novel got stopped and restarted for years, each time coming in at a different angle. I kept realizing that I hadn’t really lived enough to tell the story I wanted to tell. I was keeping busy with life (getting my research in! 😂) so there was no rush—but I had no doubt that I was a writer and that I would eventually get a novel done and out into the world.

And then one night, I dreamed the first sex scene from Blood Ex Libris—in detail! I woke up, and grabbed my laptop and wrote it out. In doing so, I realized I knew it was Vlad Dracula but he was going by another name, and I knew a fair bit already about the main character Noosh. So I went back to the beginning of the story and started writing it, to catch up to that first sex scene.

And then I kept going. There was a huge set-back when I lost about 3000 words I’d written, and I stopped writing for six months because I was so upset about it, but I finally got over it and dove back into finishing the story. (It’s crazy to me now that I nearly didn’t write the book because I had lost only 3000 words. On a good day, I can write that many words in one day!)

Anyway, that’s the story of how Blood Ex Libris, and the whole Blood & Ancient Scrolls Series began. There’s a lot more story about the story, about how I managed to get it out into the world for you to read, but that’s for another time.

I’ll go back to working on the next novel now, as I know so many of you wish I’d get it out NOW. Thank you for your patience in waiting for it! And thank you to all who made it this far in the newsletter today. You are the bestest of fans and I so deeply appreciate you! 💖

Until the next newsletter, be good or be good at it! 😉

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

This is it! The week of Halloween! I don’t know what you’ve been doing (possibly focusing on small wee issues in other aspects of life, not that there is anything news-worthy happening these days…) but as you can see from my previous September and October newsletters, this holiday has taken over my life for two months.

That’s OK. I chose this life when my subconscious presented me with a dream that would become the first words I wrote in Blood Ex Libris, and I chose it again when I pushed myself to write the whole book, no matter how hard it was (it was not the first novel I started writing, but it was the first novel I finished), and I chose it every day, because it would be vastly easier to get a normal day job that pays the bills, not trying to make it as an indie author in this cold and uncaring world.

Since I chose it every day—“Every day is Halloween”—here I am at the rewarding end of an intense and exhausting … well, let’s call it a “crucible,” in honor of the play about the Salem Witch Trials, and thus stay on theme 😉

I have a lot to get to in this newsletter, so let’s dive into the open top of the jack-o-lantern, shall we?

First Off Is Poll Results & This Year’s Halloween Costume Pictures!

The results of the “What book would you like to go on sale for Halloween?” poll was hands-down That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story 🏴‍☠️🎉

So Archie and I both dressed in pirate garb, to celebrate That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story. (He and I are both more pansexual than “lesbian,” but we hopefully got the “vampire pirate” part down 😁)

On the ultimate nerdy level, these images were shot at an SCA event, which provided a lovely wooden building that was reasonably a pirate ship. Of course, this did also mean that the attendees of the event were affectionately teasing me about being a pirate the rest of the day 😂 Here, for your enjoyment, are the results…

https://a.co/d/4xQgOMV

https://a.co/d/4xQgOMV

https://a.co/d/4xQgOMV

https://a.co/d/4xQgOMV

https://a.co/d/4xQgOMV

https://a.co/d/4xQgOMV

As you see, I saved the best for last, as Archie is really stepping up his role as “author’s dog” by now being the most compelling part of the marketing 😁 And as per your request, That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story (in ebook) is dropped to ONLY 99c until midnight on October 31^st! I’m not planning to do this sale ever again, so if you do not already have your ebook copy, avast ye and grab yer plunder!

(If you want a paperback copy and think it’s unfair that only the ebook is on sale, email me and tell me you demand a sale on the paperback in the grand piratical tradition. I will send along a coupon code, because one must respect the Pirate Code!)

 Last Sunday was Pandemonium’s Spooky Geek Faire…

and let’s just say it reaffirmed that Pandemonium Books & Games is one of the best places in the world to vend. I love the staff at Pandy, and I love the people who frequent the store. “Freaks, Nerds, and Weirdos” was an MTV program back in the ‘90s, and it’s the people who I feel most comfortable around (being all three of those things, myself) and it pretty well describes the fabulous people who come through Pandy’s doors. So I knew that the people walking past the my table would enjoy all the elements of my books: the dark fantasy/horror genre to start, and then the working in of historical characters with nerdy Easter Eggs, my method of creating the am’r using both myth and science, the fantasy language I created for the series, and of course, Noosh being a librarian and loving books so much! (Also the queerness—there is much intersection of the queer communities and the geeky communities 🩷❤️🧡💛💛💚🩵💙💜🤎🖤)

My bestie came out to sit with me (and sell my books better than I can) and while I had intended to take a bunch of pictures, we ended up with only this selfie—but what more did we need?

Caffeined-up vampire pirates ready to sell you books!

The Art of Writing Vampires, with Paulette Kennedy

Last week I had a treat I’d been waiting for all spooky season, to discuss the art and science of writing vampires. If you missed it, click below for the whole discussion, in which I explain my “Build-A-Vampire Workshop” theory and bring up an old Romanian myth where vampires had tails…

Instagram post

And now a word from our sponsor…

Fact-based news without bias awaits. Make 1440 your choice today.

Overwhelmed by biased news? Cut through the clutter and get straight facts with your daily 1440 digest. From politics to sports, join millions who start their day informed.

Sign up now!

What’s next?

First and most important, the rest of the newsletters for this year will go back to having regular updates of my progress in the next novel. Yay yay yay! You don’t know how frustrating it’s been not to be working on that 🫤

But besides that, there are about to be two Very Big Announcements that I think will have you all very excited. I’ve been working on some stuff behind the scenes and not able to mention it (which is also frustrating 😂 ) so keep watching this space for more‼️

For those of you who have read this far, have an amazing Hallowe’en and please send me pictures of you in costume or your decorations! 🎃 Until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast

I had an amazing time talking with Heather Rose Jones on her wonderful and detailed podcast about queer women in history and historic literature, plus coverage of the field of sapphic historical fiction.

Here’s the link to the episode, Episode 325: On the Shelf for October 2025. The interview with myself starts at 26 minutes in.

After we finished the interview, we kept chatting for another hour! It turns out that Heather is also in the SCA, so we had a of shared experiences and overlapping interests. It was actually really good that I hadn’t stalked her too hard before the interview, because after it was, over, I googled her name and realized that I’ve been using resources that she put online about historic sewing methods for years. If I’d know it was that Heather Rose Jones, I would have been all fan-girly and tongue-tied 🤓🤪

The Spooky Geek Faire is only FIVE days away! 🗓️⁠

This image is also a teaser for this year’s Halloween pictures… 👻

Featuring vendors with one-of-a-kind art pieces, handmade plush, illustrations, comics, books, and more! ⁠No sign-up or entrance fee are necessary to attend.

Sunday, October 19th from 12 PM to 5 PM at Pandemonium Books & Games 4 Pleasant St, Cambridge, MA 02139

I WILL be bringing my famous mulled cider again this year, so come down, buy any of the books from the series that you are missing or get your books signed, and have a glass of cider and hang out in one of the coolest places in the Boston Area!

Author-y stuff

I discovered over my time doing vending that the old first person description on the back of my novels was turning some potential customers off, so I took a moment to make new back-of-book text and to add some wonderful new blurbs to the cover as well. I’m really happy how it came out—here’s a video of me unboxing them and you can see the delight on my face!

And now a word from our sponsor…

Looking for unbiased, fact-based news? Join 1440 today.

Join over 4 million Americans who start their day with 1440 – your daily digest for unbiased, fact-centric news. From politics to sports, we cover it all by analyzing over 100 sources. Our concise, 5-minute read lands in your inbox each morning at no cost. Experience news without the noise; let 1440 help you make up your own mind. Sign up now and invite your friends and family to be part of the informed.

Subscribe to 1440 today.

Oct 23^rd will be a special Halloween LIVE with Paulette Kennedy

Paulette is brilliant fucking author, and if you haven’t read anything by her yet, you have a real treat in story for you. She writes this kind of historical feminist gothic fiction that is absolutely addictive. It’s hard to say which my favorite of her books is, but I am deeply fond of The Artist of Blackberry Grange, which (I think) is the most delightfully escapist of all her work. Her newest project is still available in Kickstarter, as part of the Once Upon A Gothic set, and it’s a retelling of Dracula from the eyes of one of Dracula’s brides. I had the privilege of reading it as an advance review copy and it’s soooooo good. You should definitely check the set out.

Anyway, now that I’ve given Paulette due adulation, I’m so excited to announce that I get to hang out with her (and all of you) on October 23^rd on her page on Instagram, doing an IG live to talk about vampires and Halloween and Things That Go Bump In The Night. This newsletter won’t be published again until after the 23^rd , so I recommend that you either go follow Paulette or keep an eye on my IG page, as I will be posting a notification there before showtime.

The last time we talked was a really excellent conversation, but in the year intervening we’ve gotten to know each other better and had this deeply satisfactory mutual appreciation society develop 🥰 so this year the discussion is going to be absolutely next level, two literary geeks just feeding off each other’s intelligence and having a blast with it, so seriously, don’t miss it!

And Now It’s Time! YOU Choose the Halloween Sale! 🫵

I couldn’t make up my mind on which book(s) should go on sale this Halloween. And then I thought, “You know, the Newsletter Readers always know best: Ask Them!” So that’s exactly what I’m doing. Are you missing a book from the series? Need one to give as a gift? It’s like “Trick or Treat” only it’s just the treat 😁

Finally, I did that video for Banned Books week that I talked about in the last newsletter. Here it is. I got a little passionate as I was making it, so when I start talking about your first amendment rights, I actually surprised myself by getting really heated, which you can actually see. I knew I cared deeply about this topic, but was not expecting to get so passionate on camera like that!

For those of you who have read this far, I’m YOUR fan, you glorious and fantastic creature! 😍 Until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

First off, a dark welcome to all the people who signed up to this newsletter from the Salem Vampire Market vamp I think you’ll feel right at home here 🧛‍♀️

Young Raven’s Halloween Costumes (AKA, the embarrassing pictures video)

As requested by poll, here’s the video of pictures of Young Raven’s Halloween Costumes. As I was going over my mom’s photo album, I realized how acutely embarrassing posting these images were going to be, but I had promised them to you lot, so here you go!

One More Time, With Feeling

I still really need more reviews of That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story, so I’m offering a treat in return for your time in writing the review 🍬

Please just take a moment from your day and click here and just write a thing or two that you enjoyed about the story. As with Amazon, it’s quantity over quality, so it really doesn’t matter if your review is not long or detailed, as long as it is there 🙏

Once the review posts, email me (you can just hit reply to this newsletter) or message me on IG or FB and let me know you’ve done a review, and I will mail you one of the shiny new stickers that were so popular at the Salem Vampire Market in appreciation 📨

You know you need one of these!

To get you in the mood to write your review, here’s a video I posted last week about how I named the ships in That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story ⛵

Salem Vampire Market recap 🧛‍♀️

Well, that couldn’t have been a much better vending experience! The fantastic people at Vampfangs had put the vendors into a beautiful space with both Salem feet-traffic (both locals and tourists—and there was no shortage of tourists that weekend—just getting to the Salem Old Town Hall was almost impossible!) and with gorgeous vampires from the Endless Nights Vampire Salon that was taking place on the upstairs floor.

After the lukewarm sales at Dark Forest Oddities Expo, I had not dared to hope my books would literally fly of my shelf, but I have never sold so many books so fast in all the time I've done vending. From the minute the event started until the last minutes before closing, I barely had a chance to take a sip of something or sit down for even 30 seconds.

There was an issue with the booth set up that had me running late enough that I wasn’t full in costume when the doors opened. After selling the first couple books in only half my costume, I had the delightful experience of selling a book while being laced into a corset—girl power if ever there was! ♀️💪

And the customers? I had three librarians! There were gorgeous vampires in completely perfect regalia. There was a woman who had come to Salem for the first time to celebrate her birthday and was buying my book for herself (you know she got the second book for free as a birthday gift!) There were fascinating people with fantastic hair and piercings and tattoos and hats. Everyone was super friendly and so appreciative — they kept thanking me for writing the series. I could get seriously spoiled by that 🤗

With my best buddy ​Lauren from Eclipse Costumes​ beside me and energy like that, I've seldom had more fun and I've never sold out completely of Blood Ex Libris before - by the last hour I had to start writing down contact info for people to order the books 🫠

Thank you Endless Nights Vampire Salon attendees and the good people (and tourists) of Salem for such a warm welcome and incredible support and encouragement. That's just what this indie author needed 🥰

Instagram post

Banned Books Week

Banned Books Week will be held October 5–11, 2025

By focusing on efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books, Banned Books Week draws national attention to the harms of censorship. The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) compiles lists of challenged books as reported in the media and submitted by librarians and teachers across the country. 

While the whole is devoted to talking about Banned Books, October 11^th is Let Freedom Read Day. Check out the suggested activities and see what you can fit in to your schedule or put up on your social media 📅

I’ll be making a reel for that day, and I haven’t finished it yet, but I have gone over a list of banned books, to see what I’ve already read (and add some new ones to my TBR list!) It was 34 pages in total (and getting longer every day) 😧 and I figured my list was long enough before I got through all of them, so here, in no specific order, are some Banned Books I’ve read (often unaware that they were ever banned at all 🙄)

From this weirdly eclectic list, these books in particular deeply impacted my life: Lord of the Rings, Where The Wild Things Are, Bridge to Terabithia, Black Boy, Where The Sidewalk Ends, and Stranger in a Strange Land. I cannot image the person I would be now without those books, and I feel so grateful that I grew up in a state that didn’t truck with book bans, and in a household with parents who let me read anything that was on the shelf of the home library, and let me have free choice at the public library.

Please take time during Banned Books week to talk to someone about the topic, or post something about your feelings about book banning, anything. This is a really desperately vital topic in the US right now, and the more we talk about it and raise awareness, the more we take steps to fight it, the more we support our freedoms, and the freedoms of future generations, and the future of libraries in this country.

And now for a Word from our Sponsor…

The #1 platform for newsletters. Period.

beehiiv is the one platform that does everything for your newsletter. And they do mean everything:

• A newsletter editor that makes your words shine like they belong on a bestseller list

• A no-code website builder that doubles as your 24/7 subscriber magnet

• Revenue tools that make earning money so easy it feels like cheating: ads, referrals, and paid subs

If you’ve got a newsletter (or even just the idea for one), beehiiv is the ultimate no-brainer.

Start for free on the absolute best platform for newsletters. No credit card required.

Amber Benson & Raven Belasco Hellmouth Con Video finally up!

For technical and boring reasons, it’s taken a minute to get this done and posted, but Maven of the Eventide and I were both committed to finally getting it up there, and together we made it happen!

This chat with Maven and Amber Benson was seriously one of the highlights of my life so far. The questions were great, the conversation was the best, and the audience was the superior kind you can expect from Buffy fandom. Go watch and enjoy it!

There’s still time to have your vote counted…

For those of you who have read this far, I’m YOUR fan, you glorious and fantastic creature! 😍 Until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

Happy Spooky Season! 🎃

So this is not going to be an image-rich newsletter, because my desktop computer had an emotional meltdown and is off at a spa-getaway at the computer repair shop. Without that desktop, I can’t create any of my planned marketing or promotion for this Spooky Season, so it’s been a nasty little setback.

That said, the upcoming next vending event is this coming Saturday!

This is your excuse to wander around Salem MA in full vamp costume!

I will be vending at the Vampfangs Salem Vampire Market, which is on the same day as their Vampire Salon and can be attended in conjunction with each other!

• Vampfangs Salem Vampire Market

• Sept 20th 2025

• 3PM-9PM

• Old Town Hall

• 32 Derby Square, Salem, MA 01970

This is your excuse to roam Salem in full vampire mode, support local goth artists and artisans, and then party with the undead. It's a perfect warm-up for Halloween!

Stickers!

In strangely thrilling news, the stickers I ordered back in the beginning of August have finally come in (I was supposed to have them for the DFO Expo, dammit) and they are really gorgeous and I’m so excited about them!

It’s the subtlety I love most about them…

These will be available for free to newsletter subscribers if you come down to a future event to say hi, or if you order something from ravenbelas.co you will absolutely get a sticker in the package. (If you have been putting off ordering one or two of the gorgeous leather bookmarks, this is your sign…!)

Luxury handcrafted leather bookmarks

The finest Blood & Ancient Scrolls Series swag we have offered thus far ✨ These luxury bookmarks are handcrafted for IIP using traditional leatherworking techniques to bring the leather to a lovely suppleness and gorgeous natural color. Then they are stamped with quotes from the series with a brilliant metallic gil

immoralinfluence.myshopify.com/products/luxury-handcrafted-leather-bookmarks

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story still desperately needs reviews 🙏

If you’ve read this novelette and haven’t left a review yet, I still seriously need reviews because I cannot start marketing the book properly until I have met a certain threshold of reviews. Please blame Amazon for me being annoying about this, but this sweet little story has the potential to really get wider attention, and one of the things holding it back is the lack of reviews. People are reading it, loving it—and just not reviewing it. So pretty pretty please, just give a few moments of your day 🙏 It doesn’t need to be a long review, even just a sentence will do. You will have my eternal gratitude!

Here is a link that takes you directly to the review page.

An author’s eye view of the Dark Forest Oddities Expo

As you’ll remember, the last event I did was a brand new goth/queer/freaks, geeks, and weirdos kind of event, that mixed vendors with burlesque performances, drag numbers, and general delightful chaos.

It was a mixed bag event for me. On the plus side, I did reach a new audience who hopefully will stick around (welcome to those of you reading this newsletter after signing up at or after the expo!) and in particular, met these fantastic old school goths who brought great conversation to my table, and then bought a copy of every book I had to sell. Future customers have a lot to live up to!

Duck Duck Goose is so over. Now we play Goth Goth Pirate!

On the downside, however, the table itself was so expensive that I only made $5 over that expense in sales, meaning I really can’t afford to do that event again. It also was a physically grueling day (trying to shout about the books to potential customers over the throbbing music of the performances takes a lot out of you) and I ended up too sick to get out of bed for three days after it, which is always a scary risk for a chronically ill person like me doing vending. So on every level the costs of doing this event were too high, but I am glad I tried it, and I made some great connections with new readers and fellow vendors, so it was not a disaster, just not something I should repeat.

Blood Depths (Book IV) finally back at sea! 🌊

After the saga of me losing my sensitivity reader and deciding to just do a bunch more research and hoping that, by the time I find a replacement this new character has had enough thought and new knowledge/understanding go into her that the reader won’t suggest any massive rewrites at the eleventh hour, I’ve finally gotten into a good place with Blood Depths again.

After I had crammed a massive amount of information into my brain, I realized that what I needed to do was an actual writing exercise. I sat down and wrote the new character’s auto-biography, up to where we meet her in Blood Depths.

This is a new thing for me. I’ve always just been able to create, hold, and understand my characters in my mind, not needing external stuff. But this complex character is going to require a lot from me to get her right, so I wanted to intimately know every detail of her life and how she felt about the things that had happened to her, the choices she’d made, etc. it also gave me a most-perfect opportunity to fully discover her voice, so that writing her can be as easy as writing Noosh or any other character.

What do you know? It worked! I had a great time doing the exercise, and now I am able to take what I have and rework this new character’s chapters so that she is consistent and fully-realized (and also I am hopefully not seriously messing up culturally or otherwise on that level.)

So now I can happily sink back into crafting the story, making it better than it was before, and then finally start rolling out new chapters. I feel really good about the choices I’ve made and the writing I am now doing…which to be painfully honest is a relief, because I was feeling a bit lost at sea (pun, hahaha) for a few weeks there.

Being a writer is really hard, you know! 😂

In great news, my computer guy just called to let me know that I can come in and pick up my now relaxed and revived machine 💃 (When do I get my own spa week, is what I’d like to know?!🤷‍♀️) so the next newsletter will be back up to the usual standards!

Thanks, as always, for your patience and support as I navigate through the challenges of being an indie author. I really rely upon you newsletter readers as my rock, the people who are seriously there for me, who actually read the whole damn thing and take the time to click on stuff. A lot of other author’s newsletter have vastly less numbers of people even opening the email, and the fact that so many of you do is something that bolsters me through the rougher parts of trying to make it as an author. So please know how much you are appreciated!

There’s still time to have your vote counted…

As always, be good or be good at it!😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

Greetings and Salutations this Season of the Witch 🧙‍♀️

First up in today’s newsletter, please take a moment to vote for That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story for Best Sapphic Rivals-to-Lovers story

No signing up for anything, just a quick click!

It’s the 29^th book down on the poll (to make it easier to find.) There are only four days left of polling, so please just take a moment right now to click – you don’t have to sign up for anything, just vote and done – and thank you! 🥰

Diving into Spooky Season 👻

You may remember that last newsletter, I was whining that I didn’t book as many events as I’d hoped for the Spooky Season. Well, one of the events I had given up on came through! (Sadly, doing a reading at my local library fell through—I’m really sad about that one, as I have not yet done a reading at a library and I feel like I’ve not really made it as an author until that happy moment in my life occurs.)

The first event of the season is coming up on Saturday September 6^th . That’s the Dark Forest Oddities Expo, and it’s a BIG ONE.

There are over fifty vendors, food and a bar serving themed drinks, a horror themed burlesque show and drag performance, a cosplay contest, and more!

It will be 11am to 6pm at the Boston Marriot Peabody, 8A Centennial Drive, Peabody, MA – Only $10 to get in (tickets available at the door) and FREE parking! More info here.

Eclipse Costumes and I will be vending side-by-side, so come hang out with us, and check out the pirate corsets that will be available in honor of That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story! We will also have a PRIZE WHEEL with some fantastic Halloween-themed prizes!

If you can’t make it to this event, then on Sept 20th I will be vending at Salem Vampire Market!

Follow VampFangs for more information

I would love to give you more information on its hours and such, but they have not been published yet. So just mark it on your calendars and I (hopefully!) will have all the information for you in the next newsletter!

The next event will be the Spooky Geek Faire at Pandemonium Books & Games, on Sunday October 19th. More about that event in the next newsletter as well!

Update on Book IV: Blood Depths ⚓

There is an exciting important character coming up in this book (as well as seeing lots of old friends again, including Sadie the Goat and Gallus Mag!) and I had found a sensitivity reader to help ensure that I got this character right.

However, after sending the first half of payment, the company ceased communicating with me (everyone steer clear of Salt and Sage Books!) and while I have done what is needed to get my money back, I am desperately lacking a Somali-American female sensitivity reader.

When I wrote about my issues with getting the permissions to use the lyrics to “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” in a previous email, one of you amazing readers stepped up and helped (and again thank you to that fantastic friend!) so I am just putting it out in this newsletter, in case by some incredible coincidence, one of you knows just the right woman for the job. Just hit reply to this newsletter if you do, or have any other information that might be useful—and thank you, all of you, for being the best readers an author could hope for. I know I say it a lot, but I really do cherish you and your support means the world to me 🥰

Anyways, in the absence of that sensitivity reader, I have stopped writing for a bit to go back and do more research so that I have an even deeper understanding of this character, and hopefully, by the time I do find my sensitivity reader, I’ll have done such a good job of writing this character, and there won’t be too many cultural fuck-ups to catch.

So, yes, it’s been another slowdown, which delights neither you nor I. But I have only one more book to basically devour whole before I feel ready to rework what I’ve already written (and honestly, it’s mostly adding some details, and doing a little rewriting, but that part won’t take very long. The stuff I’ve learned is mixing with my existing ideas for the character and it’s all becoming clear and actionable in my mind—which is a relief, I won’t lie 😂 )

This story is definitely not rolling out in linear order anymore, but then, Blood Ex Libris was massively reworked during the years I was trying to place it with an agent or publisher, and Blood Demands had that situation where Orélie the Self-Anointed basically inserted himself into the book against my objections, so really only Blood Eternal has ever been a particularly linearly-written book, and it’s basically a frame story for the origin of the am’r, so I’m not even sure it counts 🙄😁

Excuse this shorter newsletter, my dears. I am overwhelmed with “Spooky Season” prep. The coming few newsletters are going to be as stuffed with goodies as you could hope for, but for today, I’m signing off. As always, be good or be good at it!😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff