House-warming gifts :)

I have some really good news!  Today is the day I move in to a new apartment.

This year has been extremely surreal. Aside from the pandemic which is surreality in itself, (yes, that’s now a word), this year so far I have

• healed enough to accept a full-time work position
• been hired full-time as a librarian’s minion
• found a one-bedroom apartment and am finally moving out of living in other people’s homes

I have been disabled for ten years. I’ve been living in other people’s homes–either with relatives or via pet/housesitting–for all of that time.  But today is the day that changes. I am so excited.

To celebrate, I am giving away a free party-favor. Fairer will be free through this Friday.

Since I can’t actually hold a house-warming party, please enjoy a lovely reading session curled up in your favorite reading spot, sipping your favorite beverage.

If you would like to give a house-warming gift in return, I would love it.  After unwrapping gifts, we could sit at my low table on pillows and play card games and enjoy whimsical conversations full of folklore and our favorite books and writers.  What are you reading now? Have you watched The Mandalorian?

I’ll admit, the first two proper pieces of furniture I bought for my new apartment are a writing desk and chair. I can’t wait to assemble them and start using them! It will be great to have a workspace all my own again. 🙂

See you around!

-Laura

2019 in review

In 2019,

• I wrote 3 short stories, 2 poems, and most of a short prequel novel.
• One of the poems I wrote was published at NewMyths.com.
• I translated and posted a folktale.
• I finished and published Fairer, the next e-book in my French Fairy Tales & Folklore series, at long last!
• I re-posted most of my translated folktales here on this blog, in preparation for moving them to a new home.
• Switched hosts and moved littletranslator.com to a new home where it has a brand new look, theme, and folkloric feel.
• Continued on Patreon.

This year’s new release:

Fairer released!

Once upon a time, there was a princess so beautiful that her people named her Fairer-than-the-Fairies.  Of course, with a name like that, Fairer was destined for trouble.

When the wicked queen of  the fairies hears of Fairer’s reputation, the wicked queen swears to avenge her fairies’ pride. She captures the princess and condemns her to complete an impossible task by daybreak on pain of death.

But while Fairer is held prisoner, she meets a fellow captive—another mortal  princess—and the rebellious fairy prince. Together, they must complete  the wicked queen’s tasks and rescue the good queen of the fairies or all is lost.

Read two translations of this lesser-known 1698 French fairy tale, with commentary, and discover a tale featuring the power of friendship and love in its many forms. Come for the princesses and princes, queens and fairies. Enjoy the poetry, ancient history, and mythology. Stay for the friendship, and, perhaps, fall in love.

~

Fairer is now released on Amazon/Kindle Unlimited:

Amazon US: https://amzn.to/2oTanw8
Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B08114LL9T/
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08114LL9T/
Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B08114LL9T/
Brazil: https://www.amazon.com.br/dp/B08114LL9T/

Universal link to all Amazon stores worldwide: Fairer.

With more retailers to come!

And it looks like the algorithm gods have provided us with a page for Fairer on Goodreads.

Next Fairytale E-book

I’ve been hard at work translating, researching, writing, and revising my next fairy tale translation e-book, to sequel Persinette.

Feel free to follow my progress on Patreon! Or else stay tuned, my next post here will likely be in celebration of its release. 🙂

“I Will Never Be in Doctor Who”

So far this year I’ve mostly paused working on my novel to dive into various applications, including writing and submitting shorter pieces.

Today my poem “I Will Never Be in Doctor Who” has been published on NewMyths.com quarterly magazine.  It explores the intersection of disability and science fiction.

Go forth and read.

(I seem to also be sharing an issue with a fellow World Weaver Press sister-writer. This writing world is small indeed.)

2018 in review

In the spirit of accomplishments, this year I

• wrote over 100k words on my novel (probably over 120k?) written this year, increasing my overall writing pace.
• hit 245k three times as I wrote, unraveled, and rewrote large sequences. Yep, I like big books, I cannot lie.
• translated 5 folktales
• completed another translation draft of “Fairer”
• applied for several grants and a residency program in France.  A girl can dream, right?
• renewed my passport and driver’s license, and got back to driving again, yay health improvements!
• with driving comes A LIBRARY CARD and going to the library!
• continued being a moderator for ELTNA.org

From coniferous forest to….

https://vimeo.com/98674770

Currently pausing forward progress on my novel rough draft by going back and readjusting/revising generic mountainous forest setting description to…this.

Aka I did my research wrong in the beginning and I need to go back and adjust several chapters to be more awesome.

(Current wordcount: 245k)

200k and other milestones

So, last week I hit a few milestones!  Unlike my 100k blog post where I went into all kinds of detail about my novel-writing journey to that point, this post is going to be fairly short.  I think.  <.<

200k reached April 19, 2018 😀

I hit 200k on my novel wip.  The day before, I also wrote the scene I’ve been writing towards since April 2015–so, three years.  I wrote it all in a day, so that means I ended up writing 3k: 2.5k that afternoon and another 500 words of tinkering and adjustment in the hour before bed.  I don’t think I’ve ever written 3k in a day before, especially not while sick, but probably not even when I was healthy.  I’ve written much more than that in collaborative writing sessions, but writing solo where all pieces on the board to figure out are mine is different.

Honestly? I’ve been kind of exhausted and reeling ever since.  This scene is a crucial turning point.  The fall-out of this scene would also traditionally be the spot for a cliffhanger, since it changes everything for the protagonists up to that point, but I’m not going to split this into two books, so I’m going to keep going.

Nevertheless, reeling.

At this point I have no idea if I’ve pulled it off.  I’m sure the answer is both yes and no,  and that I will need to adjust things that come before, during, and after the scene to make it really clinch.

However, let me just say, it was EXTREMELY WEIRD to feel both the relief and satisfaction of having completed The Scene and the sadness and anguish for the characters and the turmoil they are now in.  I’m not a writer who cackles gleefully or otherwise enjoys putting characters through a difficult time, so…WEIRD.

~

In any case, my other bit of news is that I’m on track for this month’s Camp NaNoWriMo.  I’m working on revising the fairy tale I’ve chosen to be my sequel to Persinette.

The fairy tale is 96 old book pages, and I’m retranslating/revising another 30 of them this month.

~

If you want to check out my novel’s first chapter, join my fiction mailing list.

If you want to support my fairy tale and folktale translations, see my patreon.

Till next time!~

Persinette’s 1st year, Bk2 Update

Just dropping in to talk briefly about how Persinette did in its first year (pre-order in March; April 2015- May 2016).  For a bit of background, the only paid advertising I did was at the very beginning.  Occasionally I dropped the book into free promotional opportunities, but nothing regular.  I sought out its first review, but none of the others.  The only passive advertising I’ve got going is its book page on Goodreads and the link on my Twitter profile.

I could be missing numbers because I tallied things up really quickly for curiosity’s sake.  Canada looks low, for example, but the rough percentages are right:

Sold: 141 copies
Amazon: 116 (US), 9 (UK), 1 (France), 2 (Canada), 6 (Australia)
Kobo: 1
B&N/Nook: 1
Apple/iBooks: 5

Total free copies given away during promotion: 113
KU1 borrows, while enrolled the first 3 months: 10

Price point: $0.99
Earning roughly $0.30/book
Royalties: ~ $45

Goodreads: 14 ratings, 4 reviews – 4.14 starred average

Based off this, it’s not worth it to go wide-release with Book 2, considering KU1 gave me 10 borrows while I was enrolled and there’s been no traction at all at the other retailers.  So my plan right now is to leave Persinette in wide-release but release all subsequent books as KDP Select/Amazon-exclusive and see where that puts me.

If you happen to be reading this and you’re a Kobo/iBooks/B&N fan, feel free to buy a copy and leave a review on one of the other retailers and change my mind. 😉

And yep, Patreon is still a better “return on investment” than the Persinette e-book, but I’m doing this for love, curiosity, learning, and practice more than anything else.

~

As for how Book 2 in the French Fairy Tales & Folklore series is coming, I’m almost done with the translation rough/research draft.   The fairy tale is 96 pages (17th century style) whereas “Persinette” was 34.   It contains two poems, versus “Persinette”‘s one.

It takes me anywhere from a half hour to an hour to work through a page’s rough draft, although the 6-line first poem took me an hour to get to a satisfactory level.

I’ve got several ideas on how I’m going to present the tale in book form, but at this point I’m not sure if it will be released this year or in 2017.  We’ll have to see!

~

ETA: Updated books sold with Apple’s/iBook’s numbers.  And they’re all Australians! Hello, Australia!

 

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Happy All Saints’ Day!

My Alsatian folktale retelling “What She Saw By Lantern Light” will be published in Enchanted Conversation‘s and World Weaver Press‘ joint winter anthology, Frozen Fairy Tales.  You can find out more information, including the announced table of contents, here. You can find Frozen Fairy Tales on Goodreads, here.

I’ll post more once the anthology’s released. 🙂

Until then, I put my Bibliography back up, fully fleshed-out.  I took it down a couple years ago because it was depressingly empty and I felt having it up was rather pointless (and discouraging).  But now it is much fuller! And there is a point to having one! Woot woot.