I think writing a book (and now two), and especially when well received, is quite an accomplishment. Not my particular genre of choice, but that's neither here nor there, since I'm hardly the target audience. How long did it take your wife to write the book, and what was her writing schedule like? Was there any kind of tangential research involved, or was it entirely a product of the imagination? Just curious. As an aside, has Ashley ever read Stephen King's "On Writing," which he wrote a number of years ago? I'm not a big King fan, but I've read a couple of his books and there is no denying he writes well. I ask because I read this fairly short non-fiction book of his wherein he describes his writing process, and it was fascinating to learn how, among other things, he fashions his story lines to come together. What appears to have been conceived well in advance (I imagined all kinds of flow charts before starting), was never really the case. It was an excellent read. If your wife never read this book, I think it would be a weekend well spent, not unlike us guys reading one of Schwager's interview books.
Congratulation to your wife on coming out with her second novel! If the novel turns into a movie one day, please let me be the vampire trader who help Selene make lots of money to buy back her vampire lover, Cole. (Note: this is the Hollywood version, so it deviates from the novel a bit.)
"Ungarded" took her about a year to write, but a lot of that time was spent on publishing and marketing the book before that called Crimson Groves. Lately I've noticed that she is quickly accelerating the writing pace for the sequel to Crimson Groves called "Crimson Flames", which equates to about 2000 words per day. She said she's never read that Stephen King book, but can identify with his on-the-fly methods. She never writes down an outline or plans things out in advance. It's all just in her head and she just dumps everything in writing as it occurs to her, which blows my mind to be honest with you. My brain just doesn't work like that at all.
Ha ha!! She'll get a kick out of your reply. I would show her now but she's asleep. Thanks so much to you and others for the positive feedback.
Yes, she is self published. It's the only way to go in my opinion. I went to a big writer's convention with her in San Francisco and let me tell you, the book industry is a total wreck. The problem is that the old school model of getting an agent to represent your work to large buyers is pretty much over for two reasons: 1. Bookstores are closing, so the pool of potential wholesale buyers is fading quick. 2. Because of #1, Agents and publicists have no clue how to market the book in this new era of digital publishing. And I mean no clue whatsoever. So that really leaves an author completely on their own to navigate the world of self-publishing. Ashley has managed to develop some relationships with quite a few other successful authors, one of which is a New York Times bestselling author. She shared with me some of the conversations that she's had with them, and from what I can gather, it appears that the winning model is a long-tail, high volume model. In other words, no author is going to make any significant money from publishing one book. A successful fiction author is someone who has 10 or more ebooks available for purchase, with each book representing a small revenue stream. It seems that virtually all of the ebook sales are happening on the kindle, or devices like the ipad that have a kindle app on it. The strategy that's working these days, at least for a fiction author, is making the first book in a series super low-priced (like $2.99), or even free, to bait the customer and get them hooked on following the main character in the book. That way, the customer feels compelled to purchase the next book in the series, which of course will be priced higher. Each successive book in the series carries a slightly higher price, with the very latest book carrying the largest premium. The most successful self-published authors from a profit standpoint seem to be those who already have great photoshop and layout skills, which means that the costs which would historically be expensive, such as cover design, page layout and ebook formatting, are essentially zero. But with all that said, it's no way to make a decent living. Ashley has been working her ass off 10 hours per day for the past two years and she is about break even on the first book and the second one is deep in the red. But she is determined to get it all figured out and make it a real career, even if it takes her 5 years to get to that point.
Please don't take this the wrong way. My wife works a minimum of 10 hours per day, and has for too many years now( I wish I was exaggerating). She has a b.s., and a Masters in Transfusion Medicine, and the pay works out not so great when I figure in the education costs, and hours she puts in, but she loves it, and the challenges. I don't always love it. If your wife is on the side of the hassles are worth the work, then what the heck, keep encouraging her, and maybe the payday will be there, or at least enough to make the work a little more enjoyable. My Dad edited one book about his Infantry unit in WWII, but always dreamed of writing, but never did. I more or less harrased him to get writing the last 20 years of his life. Anyway point being, I think your wife should keep at it. More people should be at least trying to write books, books of all kinds. I worry that the Facebook, Twitter generation won't look to books because they are too long to spend time on, and that idea kills me. I have read 4 books since January, and wish I had read many more. Books stoke my thought process, and imagination, and I try to get that idea through to my kids.
I've just written a book on reverse psychology. But It's shit and you shouldn't buy it. Stay tuned.......