Elizabeth Bell, Author

Undeniable Love. Unflinching History. Unforgettable Fiction.

Publishing

Necessary Sins Is An Audiobook!

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At long last, my favorite format of Necessary Sins is live: the audiobook! I’m even more excited now than I was at the initial publication of this novel—because I think my writing is good, but I know my narrator is great! His name is Dallin Bradford. At the bottom left of the cover, tap the play arrow to hear a snippet of the audiobook:

Don’t you just want to listen to Dallin’s mellifluous voice for 16 hours straight? You’re in luck! My novels are literal epics, and the audiobook of Necessary Sins is 16 hours and 19 minutes of glorious listening.

You can hear a longer sample of Dallin’s performance on Audible, Amazon, and Apple Books. I wanted to feature this additional excerpt because

A. It explains one of the sources of my title, Necessary Sins

B. You get to hear Dallin sing

In the full-length audiobook, Dallin also sings a 19th-century ballad and even a couple of lines from an opera! His talents don’t stop there: he excels not only at riveting, emotional narration but also at portraying my huge cast of characters, no matter their gender, age, or accent.

You can hear Dallin voicing my Charleston hero and Irish heroine in the 5-minute Audible/Amazon sample. For the rest of his performance, you’ll have to buy the audiobook. 😉 It’s now available from Audible, Amazon, and Apple Books. If you already have the Kindle edition of Necessary Sins or want to purchase it, you should be able to add the audiobook for a reduced price through Amazon. In the U.S., I see “Add Audible narration” for $7.49.

And yes, Dallin will be recording the entire Lazare Family Saga in audio!

You’ll notice that in order to convert the ebook covers for The Lazare Family Saga into audiobook covers, my designer had to convert rectangles into squares. This is a legacy of when audiobooks were primarily on CDs. The conversion was tricky—we had to flip and rearrange elements—but I’m pleased with the final result. In particular, I love that we get to see more of Clare’s gorgeous skirt on the audiobook cover of Native Stranger…coming soon!

How I Found My Audiobook Narrator

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I’ve been an audiobook addict for years. I listen to an average of two books per week while commuting or doing housework. As someone with the equivalent of two full-time jobs, multitasking with audio is the primary way I experience books. If they weren’t mine, I wouldn’t have time to read my own epic novels! Having my four books converted to audio for book lovers like me was an absolute must. But how?

First, I educated myself about the audiobook production process. Great resources to get me started were Joanna Penn’s book Audio for Authors (I went for the audiobook, of course); this YouTube series by author and narrator Catherine Bilson; this Kindlepreneur post; and this FAQ at NarratorList.com. I also picked the brains of my fellow indie historical novelists with audiobooks to find out how they’d done it. They were Melissa Addey, Lars D. H. Hedbor, Susan Higginbotham, Susie Murphy, and Michael L. Ross, and they were so helpful.

I knew audiobooks aren’t cheap to produce—we’re talking thousands of dollars. Some indie authors narrate their own books, but this wasn’t for me. I’m not good enough with accents, and my books have a smorgasbord. Nor do I have access to a quiet space or the right equipment. I could have hired a production company to find a narrator for me, but doing the search myself helped keep my costs down.

When hiring a narrator, there are two main payment paths: Royalty Share (RS) and Per Finished Hour (PFH) as well as a couple of hybrid options. Royalty Share means the narrator records the book for no money upfront in exchange for a percentage of the royalties the audiobook earns over a set period of time, usually 50/50 with the author for seven years. Per Finished Hour means that the Rights Holder, in this case the author/publisher, pays the narrator an agreed amount for every hour of the finished audiobook, say 10 hours. A narrator can read roughly 9,300 words in a finished hour. The narrator puts in say 80 hours total on the book, but they get paid only Per Finished Hour. They’ve done prep work like mastering an accent and learning how to pronounce local place names. They’ve also done retakes because nobody sits down and records a whole chapter perfectly in one sitting.

Because of all the accents in my books, I knew I needed an experienced narrator to do my characters justice. I also write long books (requiring more hours in the recording booth) with steamy sex scenes (which some narrators don’t want to read). I knew these factors would narrow the pool of possible narrators. I decided to pay PFH. As an artist who values fellow artists’ work, this method made me more comfortable than asking a narrator to take a gamble on me with RS. So I saved my money, and an insurance settlement allowed me to afford PFH if I could find a narrator who wasn’t asking top dollar, which can be $500/PFH. On a 15.3 hour audiobook like mine, that’s $7,650. For one book.

How to find this narrator? An author needs to put together an “audition script,” selections from her novel that she asks prospective narrators to record. Then the author decides on the performance she thinks fits her work best. It’s important to choose representative excerpts containing both narrative and various character voices. The recommended length of an audition script is 3-5 minutes.

With a family saga like mine and such a large, diverse cast, I knew that length wouldn’t be enough. This narrator was actually auditioning for my whole series: four long novels, almost 60 finished audiobook hours total. The Lazare Family Saga is my life’s work, and I would be paying this narrator more than I’d spent on anything in my life. I needed to know the narrator was versatile enough to handle my epic books, that they could do a French accent and a Charleston accent and an Irish accent; male, female, and child voices; act in tragic scenes without going over-the-top; understand my sense of humor; read sexy scenes and not sound silly; and hopefully sing a few 19th-century songs as well.

My audition script was about 10 minutes long, snippets from five scenes. I saw this as part of the screening process: if the narrator didn’t care enough about my project to read it all, then they wouldn’t be a good fit. Only one of the 34 narrators who auditioned didn’t read the whole script. (But if everyone in your novel has similar accents and you don’t need so much versatility, don’t waste narrators’ time by exceeding the recommended script length as much as I did.) In addition to the scene snippets, I included the context of each scene, who the characters were, and how they should sound.

I posted my audition call in three places: ACX (owned by Audible/Amazon), NarratorList, and a Facebook group for narrators. The narrator I selected ended up seeing all three calls. I detailed the genre, the word count, the accents needed, the content warnings, the upper limit PFH I could afford, that my timeline was flexible—everything a potential narrator needed to know when considering my project. Since the text version was already published, I linked to it on Amazon so the narrators could see the reviews and read the opening pages if they wanted. In the Facebook group, even narrators who weren’t interested commented to praise the thoroughness of my audition call. If you want to do Royalty Share, you’ll also need to explain your current sales and future marketing plan so that the narrator has confidence the book will sell.

I left my audition call open for two weeks. I got the most responses in the first week and the majority through ACX. (I should note here that I hate the antiquated, clunky, frustrating ACX interface and its practically nonexistent customer service. If the site had been live when I was searching for a narrator, I would have started with Findaway Voices Marketplace.) I invited some narrators to audition after fellow authors recommended them and I’d already heard their samples. But for most, their audition was the first time I heard their voice.

Inside a recording booth: acoustic panels in the background and a microphone and pop shield in the foreground. A pop shield protects the microphone from “plosives” like p sounds, which produce harsh puffs of air that you don’t want to hear when you’re enjoying a story.

I anxiously listened to each of the 34 auditions as they poured and trickled in. I put these narrators into an Excel spreadsheet, noting who’d done well with the French, who’d done a convincing Irish accent, whose natural voice I particularly liked, who could do sexy, what their weaknesses were, etc. Did they understand and express the emotion in my words without overacting?

Sometimes I communicated with the narrator through ACX Messaging (again, hate) or email as well. If the person seemed genuinely enthusiastic about my book, that made an impression on me. Other narrators seemed to be primarily interested in showing off.

Most narrators had websites or at least profiles on ACX or NarratorList. I listened to the samples they’d posted so I could get a sense of their range beyond what I’d heard in their audition. I found the books they’d narrated on Audible and Overdrive, where you can listen to 5-minute samples. What other genres had they narrated? Any historical fiction like mine?

I left the call open to both male and female narrators. Did I want someone who could be me, only better? Or did I want a male voice, since most of my point-of-view characters are men? I received 24 auditions from men and 10 from women. Of my Top Five, the narrators who were so good they gave me chills, three were men and two were women.

I sorted the narrators into the very scientific categories of: No, Probably Not, Low Maybe, and High Maybe. None of the narrators were “perfect.” None of them read every line with the emphases I would have given each word, and almost no one pronounced all the French names correctly. I’d already learned from Mr. Hedbor that I would have to “let it go” as I listened, that no narrator would recreate the voices in my head 100% of the time.

But on some things, I would have to stick to my guns and ask for changes, like the narrator who made my thirty-one-year-old priest protagonist (who’s supposed to be sexy) sound like a gawky, drooling teenager. “How easy would this person be to work with?” became a significant factor. Did the narrator seem like someone who would take offense if I insisted they change a voice or pronounce Ève the French way, or did they seem like a true collaborator, someone who could take feedback and run with it—as long as I trusted them most of the time? Did I think I could trust this person to get my books right most of the time?

The official process on ACX is that after the author has approved the audiobook’s first fifteen minutes, the narrator proceeds with the rest. The only changes the author can request after that are proof listening errors, where the narrator skipped or changed a word. One of the reasons I chose the narrator I did is that he’s allowing me to listen to each chapter as he records, and he’s open to implementing feedback beyond the first fifteen. But I am endeavoring to “let it go” unless he’s pronouncing something incorrectly or his performance is changing the meaning of my words.

Before I made my decision, I asked for a callback, a second audition script with different scenes. I’d ended up with very few lines from my heroine, Tessa, so I asked for more of her as well as a full verse of song. Price was also a factor. Most of my auditioning narrators did not provide their PFH rate; but of those who did, I was pleased to discover that price did not necessarily equal quality. My top two narrators, who did provide their rates, were at the low end of the scale. Before I signed a contract with my final pick, I contacted a couple of the authors who’d published audiobooks with him to ask if they’d recommend him.

After years of anticipation, months of research and preparation, and fourteen days of anxiety, I found a narrator who is the total package—even if he did pronounce Ève the English way in his audition. We fixed that, because he’s open to feedback. He is a consummate actor—he also plays roles on the stage. He’s great with accents. He’s American, but he studied acting in Ireland. And boy howdy, can he sing! He seduced me with “Danny Boy” before I even asked for a song. Above all, his speaking voice is perfect for my priest and doctor characters. His voice is warm, versatile, rich, expressive, and soothing—he has great bedside manner, so to speak! He sounds like someone I want to confide in because I trust he’ll truly listen and give me good advice.

His name is Dallin Bradford, and I know he’ll win an audiobook award someday. Don’t take my word for it. Have a listen for yourself. Do you think I chose wisely?

You should be able to enjoy Dallin’s full performance of Necessary Sins next month, May 2022.

P.S. Since there can be only one, I wrote kindly-worded rejection letters to the 33 narrators I decided not to choose. Most of them wrote back to thank me. One even said it was the best rejection letter she’d ever received! Apparently letting narrators know they didn’t get the part isn’t industry standard. But I’ve been on the other side of rejection letters as an author querying literary agents. I know how heartbreaking it is to receive a form rejection and how frustrating it is to receive NO RESPONSE AT ALL. Writers and narrators are fellow artists who owe each other the courtesy of a kind, definitive answer. If you’re an author auditioning narrators, I encourage you to send every one of them a reply.

Anatomy of a Book Cover, Part 2

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Are you ready for the real designer wizardry?

To quote Desdemona in Othello: “O, these men, these men!” The male characters on the ebook covers of Necessary Sins and Sweet Medicine were particularly challenging to represent with stock images. No single image would do; my cover designer, Damonza, had to combine multiple images and make them look like they belonged together.

Joseph Lazare, the protagonist of Necessary Sins, is multiracial: White French, African (Yoruba), and Native American (Dakota). He’s also a Catholic priest, and this is his primary identity. There were no images of appropriate men in cassocks on stock sites. Lots of White men and a few dark-skinned Black men, but none with curly black hair and the right skin tone.

Do any of these men say “tortured priest” to you?

A couple of Latino priests seemed promising, and in fact Joseph’s racist great-grandmother tells Joseph and his father that they’re part Spanish. But the Latino priests didn’t work because they either had a modern hairstyle (cropped too short); they had beards (until modern times, Catholic priests weren’t allowed to grow facial hair); and/or their expressions were simply silly (see above). For serious historical fiction, I needed a serious expression. Their short hairstyles, facial hair, spectacles, and silly or smiling expressions also prevented me from finding any White man who could “play” Joseph, whatever he was wearing.

In addition, most cassocks (a.k.a. soutanes) on stock sites weren’t appropriate for the early 19th century. The buttons couldn’t be plastic, and the priestly collar couldn’t be the starched modern kind (see above). I found an acceptable cassock at last, even if the man wearing it was White. Fortunately, given the right two images, my designer was able to do a “head swap,” combining the head of an appropriate Black man with an appropriate cassock like a digital paper doll.

Let me show you the original stock images I suggested to my designer for Necessary Sins and then the final design. (My designer sourced them from Shutterstock. I’ve purchased the same images from Depositphotos, which is more reasonably priced for small-scale users like me.) First, Joseph’s head:

You’ll notice that I had my designer lighten this man’s skin. Considering the history of Black people chemically lightening their skin to fit in with White culture, this bothers me. But as I indicated above, I just couldn’t find a White or racially ambiguous man who was right for Joseph; their expressions, hairstyles, and/or beards were always wrong. This man’s curly black hair is perfect for Joseph. (My designer filled in the top of his head from another shot of the same model.) I also like the way his full hair echoes the shape of Tessa’s bonnet and vice-versa. His features are really “too African” to pass for White as Joseph does, but using a Black model felt more truthful than using a White man with modern hair. Like all of my female cover models, this model (or at least the photographer) is Russian too!

Joseph’s body, the same model who appears on the paperback and hardback covers of Necessary Sins, there with dramatic lighting inside a confessional. Note the cloth cassock buttons and soft collar. While this photo wasn’t taken in Russia, it was taken in Ukraine. (I dearly hope that both the model and the photographer are safe right now.)

The unhelpfully captioned “A young girl in a hat stands against the background of the forest” by Darya Komarova. This woman is really too young for Tessa; I’d guess she’s in her mid-teens. I wish there wasn’t so much hair in her face, but at least it’s the right color. Her dress is on the ugly side, but her silhouette is unmistakably 19th century even at a small size. Those poofy “leg-of-mutton” sleeves are distinctively 1830s, and Tessa and Joseph meet in 1835 (when she is 19). The way she’s holding that book allowed my designer to have her holding onto Joseph’s arm instead:

The final cover, thanks to the magic/talent of the designers at Damonza. The sunset with flying birds was their idea. I think it evokes the cover of Sue Monk Kidd’s The Invention of Wings, also set in antebellum (pre-Civil War) Charleston. I asked Damonza to add the palmettos, the state tree of South Carolina with a memorable place in Charleston history.

If you’re thinking “That’s not a Charleston house,” you’re right. This is Dunleith in Natchez, Mississippi. Mansions with columns all the way around the outside are typical of Natchez and Louisiana. When I was experimenting with my own cover mockups, I tried some actual Charleston homes available on stock sites, but none of them said “antebellum American South” at a small size and at a glance the way this one does.

In Necessary Sins, Tessa marries into the Stratford family, who do own a home like this with columns all the way around the outside. I gave the Stratfords a Louisana connection so they’d be inspired to remodel their South Carolina home in this style. With its wraparound verandas, its spaces that are both outside and inside, public and private, this architectural style fits perfectly with the duality at the heart of my family saga. The Lazares themselves are simultaneously Black and White, happy and miserable, pure and wicked…

Fun fact: Once upon a time (two decades ago), I slept in a four-poster bed inside this very house, Dunleith. Built in 1855, it became a National Historic Landmark in 1974 and a bed and breakfast in 1976. I was in historical heaven that night. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

Another bit of fun: Before I had my designer combine images, I tested my concepts by creating mockups in a program called Canva. I needed to make sure the man and woman were about the same size, so I duplicated his head and brought it closer to hers for comparison. I was sleepless and stressed out at this point and a little bit bonkers, so I thought it would be funny to put his head in her bonnet. The result gave me some sorely needed laughs. Designing covers is long hours of hard work, especially when you’re doing it for the second time around. This bit of silliness helped. Did I make you laugh too?

On the cover of Sweet Medicine, Joseph’s nephew Dr. David Lazare is also comprised of three stock images. I asked my designer to add a medical bag to fit the title and his profession. I also wanted David to be wearing his signature Vandyck beard. The original model was clean-shaven, and here’s proof! 

While I purchased the rights to this image, I’ve purposefully posted the low-resolution watermarked version to prevent piracy per the FAQ at PeriodImages.com

Yep, David’s facial hair is transplanted, likely from this model whom I sent my designer as a reference. David’s beard is probably my favorite bit of Photoshop wizardry on my covers. Victorian men took pride in their facial hair—unless they were priests or American Indians. 😉 This Vandyck really makes David look like David. 

As for the building on the cover, that’s another story. My designer and I went through several ideas for the setting image. My characters take a cross-country journey in Sweet Medicine, so my first thought was a train or a stagecoach. But a train isn’t specific to the United States, and there aren’t any good stagecoach images on Shutterstock or Depositphotos. Furthermore, a method of transportation made David’s medical bag look like a suitcase by association.

I also considered pretty mountains, perhaps a mountain lake. Again, not technically specific to the United States. As I stared at the four new covers of The Lazare Family Saga lined up together, mountains didn’t quite fit. They didn’t say “American history” in and of themselves the way the setting images on the first three covers do. In their lower images, Necessary Sins, Lost Saints, and Native Stranger all feature predominantly white man-made structures that say “19th-century United States” at a glance and at a small size. I decided we needed another white building to echo the one on Necessary Sins. 

What’s special about the structure I chose for Sweet Medicine is that it’s actually doing double duty. The novel begins in South Carolina, and this building looks like it belongs there. In fact, this Greek Revival structure is the oldest Wyoming building still standing—the officers’ quarters at Fort Laramie, constructed in 1849-1850 and nicknamed “Old Bedlam” after its raucous parties. The architect was a New Hampshire man, Lieutenant Daniel Phineas Woodbury, and the blocky wings were part of his original design. They contain kitchens, storerooms, and cooks’ quarters. 

Here’s a photo I took on a research trip to Fort Laramie back in 2006, when the building was decorated with bunting for Independence Day.

Although my point-of-view characters don’t know the name Old Bedlam, the building makes an appearance in both Lost Saints and Sweet Medicine when they visit Fort Laramie. This military post was an important stop along the overland trail, within sight of the Rocky Mountains. I like the way Old Bedlam evokes both of my saga’s major settings, the Old South and the Old West. 

Old Bedlam also gave me an opportunity to include an “Easter egg” on the cover of Sweet Medicine, a “Waldo” hidden in plain sight.

These ebook covers’ primary purpose is to shout “I’m historical fiction!” at a small size. But I couldn’t resist asking my designer to add a second character besides David, a character discernible only if you view
Sweet Medicine at a large size. Even then, the second character will be tiny. Can you find him?

Click on the cover for the file, where you can zoom in.

Here are a few hints: This character’s name is Allister, and he also represents his distant cousins Mignon and Reinette. He belongs to E. P. Vaux, but Allister has been visiting one of Old Bedlam’s kitchens in hopes of a treat.

Or click here to cheat and see a closeup view of the character. 😉

I hope peeking behind the scenes of my cover redesign has been a treat for you, dear reader. I’d love to hear what you think!

Anatomy of a Book Cover, Part 1

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After five months of research and revisions, the ebooks of The Lazare Family Saga have brand-new covers at last! If you’re curious why and how they look the way they do, make yourself comfortable. The creation of these four covers for my fictional family saga is a saga itself, so I’ve split it into two parts. You might also want to check out this prequel post on why my original covers needed an update for the digital world.

In short, I think of these as my “billboard covers.” Their purpose is to shout “I’m historical fiction set in the 19th century United States! If you like that, check me out!” as potential readers scroll through Facebook, Amazon, and anywhere else they appear online.

In my cover breakdown, I’ll be speaking from the point-of-view of an indie historical novelist whose books are intended for an adult audience. Also keep in mind that whatever I chose had to be sustainable over a four-book series. The covers have to follow the same “branding”; at a glance, the books must visually belong together.

There are three main routes in book cover design:

  1. Hire an illustrator to paint or otherwise create a custom illustration for your book cover. This method was popular in the past and includes the original covers of the books that inspired me to write historical sagas, books such as Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds (1977) and Brock and Bodie Thoene’s Zion Covenant series (1989-1991). Back when I thought I’d be traditionally published, this is what I expected my books to look like.

    But times change. Not only is custom illustration prohibitively expensive for an indie author like me (you’re paying not only the illustrator but also a designer to create a book cover using that illustration), such book covers have become rare even in traditional publication, at least for serious historical fiction aimed at adults. Custom illustrations can look cartoonish and give the impression that the book is Young Adult or another genre like fantasy in which illustration remains popular.
Where it all began: My mother’s copy of Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds with its original illustrated cover. Thanks, Mom!

2. Hire a photographer who hires models who resemble your characters. The photographer would find costumes appropriate to my book’s time period and do a custom photoshoot, probably incorporating period-appropriate props like jewelry and furniture. They might even take the photos at a historic 19th-century property. All of these elements cost heaps of money, so again, not in my budget for a four-book series.

3. What most indie authors do is choose a talented designer to combine and manipulate existing stock images available on sites like Despositphotos and Shutterstock. Because the first two cover routes weren’t financially feasible, this had to be my choice both for my original covers (now limited to the paperback and hardcover formats, created by Bookfly Design) and for my new covers (ebooks and forthcoming audiobooks, created by Damonza).

Using stock images is easier in some genres than others and easier with some characters than others. Since my fiction is character-driven, I wanted to put people on all the covers this time around. But if some of your characters aren’t White, you have fewer options because there are fewer non-White models on stock sites. In addition, decent images of people wearing historical clothing are few and far between.

Sure, there are women in “vintage dresses,” but these are usually painfully bad approximations of historical clothing. Since the contents of my books are meticulously researched and accurate, I didn’t want cover models in clothing that is glaringly wrong for my setting—or any historical setting, only a fantasy version of past fashions. Furthermore, these models in “historical” clothing almost always have modern hairstyles and/or makeup, which ruins the effect.

An even worse example of cringe-worthy stock photos are the results for “Native American.” Almost all of these are so atrocious, they are offensive to anyone who knows anything about Native culture. Think naked White women lounging in fields wearing eagle feather headdresses. Shudder.

Do you see what I had to wade through? Imagine HUNDREDS of pages of these.

I should note that an indie author doesn’t have to find stock images before approaching a designer. But designers appreciate it because it saves them time, as long as you give them a few options and don’t insist that Images A and B must appear on the cover even if they don’t work together. The lighting may be incompatible, for example. Moreover, I know 19th-century clothing and American history—not to mention my characters—better than my designer, so I know better which stock images are rubbish and which are close enough.

The problem of finding the right images is exacerbated by the fact that most of the best-for-historical-fiction photographers on stock sites, the ones who have images of models in decent historical clothing, are Russian. English isn’t their first language, so these Russian photographers label their images with generic or misspelled keywords that make the photos hard to find.

For example, the stock image I chose for Tessa on my Necessary Sins ebook cover is titled “A young girl in a hat stands against the background of the forest.” (She’s wearing an 1830s bonnet and gown.) The image we used for Tessa on the paperback and hardcover is “Beautiful woman with long hair in a long white dress. He [sic] sits at the vintage table and looks away.” She is wearing a Regency gown from the early 1800s. It’s truly a mislabelled needle in a haystack situation.

“Beautiful woman with long hair in a long white dress. He sits at the vintage table and looks away.” By Darya Komarova. This woman’s hair is perfect for Tessa, so I’m glad we get to keep her on the paperback and hardback covers. Cropping her not only avoids her modern eye makeup but also disguises the fact that her dress is a couple of decades too early for my character.

This is why I spent weeks searching stocks sites for models who might “play” my characters, using every keyword I could think of. Ninja Tip: I found some photos by clicking on every vaguely decent image of a person in historical clothing that came up in my search, no matter the era, and then viewing the photographer’s other images. This is how I found “Girl in a hat.”

My main goal in redesigning my ebook covers was to say “I’m historical fiction!” at a small size. I knew the best way to do that was to include images of people in historical clothing plus distinctive setting images like an antebellum mansion and covered wagons. Because of branding, before I approached a cover designer with this idea, I had to find usable images of all five of my major characters as well as four good setting images.

The character who initially worried me most was Ésh, my “White Indian.” He couldn’t be wearing a feather headdress (he’s not a war leader), and he needed to be wearing a shirt (he’s not in a bad romance novel kidnapping a White damsel). As you can imagine, I was over the moon when I found this stock image:

This man isn’t 100% right for Ésh. His hair is too dark (my designer lightened it) and too short, and Ésh’s preferred weapon is a bow and arrow. The decoration on his head is called a “roach,” made of porcupine hair. This kind of headdress wasn’t typically worn by the Cheyenne, but it’s possible when you factor in trade and personal preference. At least it’s not an eagle feather headdress. As stock images go, this man is awesome. And yes, even “Ésh” was taken by a Russian photographer!

This is the image that made representing my central characters on my book covers possible. Since this is the only image of this model that I really liked, this man’s position also dictated that the other characters would be seen from the front. Most of my final character images weren’t uploaded to stock sites till 2020, so they weren’t available when my first designer and I were working on my original covers.

A slightly more useful caption: “Beautiful girl in historical dress, gloves, near the house,” also by Darya Komarova.

My designer lightened the hair of this model for me as well, so she would better resemble my character. Her hair is far too short, and Clare would wear it pinned up, but those aren’t things my designer could fix.

This is another case where only one shot of the model expressed my character; in the other shots of this woman, she looks snooty. Here, she simply looks spunky, perfect for Clare.

On the cover of Native Stranger, I’d hoped to make Clare’s skirt white so that it could better echo the tipis and vice-versa. However, the title had to be legible, and we had to keep a light-colored title for series branding. Therefore, the woman’s skirt had to have some color. My designer went for layering the skirt over the tipi image, which is a cool effect. Here are the final covers:

You’d never know it, but originally the stock image of the wagon train and landscape was black and white; my designer colorized it. That’s only the beginning of what a good designer can do. Next week, I’ll take you behind the scenes on the two most complex covers in my new set: Necessary Sins and Sweet Medicine. Psst: Joseph and David were each created from three different stock images!

On Second Thought…

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"Ring out the old, ring in the new…"
— Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam (1850)

In November-December 2021, I completed a new edit of the entire Lazare Family Saga. I am a perfectionist; I could honestly go through these long books every year and find things to change. But I shall endeavor to be satisfied with Version 2021. My primary purpose was to make certain I was happy with the text of all four books before they become “set in stone” in audio format. This will hopefully begin in 2022, depending on how long it takes me to find a narrator and his or her availability.

As for the ebook and print editions, the beauty of being an indie author is that I can make changes at any time. These edits weren’t substantial enough to qualify as a revised edition; they were mostly a scattering of line edits for clarity.

I did tweak some scenes with Joseph and David. I have always loved these characters, because—not in spite of—their flaws. But I’ve realized that some readers find them difficult to like, so I’ve tried to soften some of Joseph and David’s reactions to keep them more sympathetic. One of my earliest readers said I have a tendency to “turn it up to 11,” referencing the hilarious film This Is Spinal Tap. And yes, yes I do. Teenage me who conceived these characters wasn’t satisfied with wounded heroes; they had to be profoundly screwed up so that their redemption was as dramatic as possible. But I sometimes crossed the line into melodrama. So I’ve tried to rein in my over-the-top impulses while retaining Joseph and David’s authentic Catholic/Victorian wounds.

I also realized that a scene between Clare and Verily was more focused on the heroism of White mistress Clare teaching her enslaved Black maid Verily than it was on Verily’s agency and desire to read. This was a holdover from an earlier draft and a less socially conscious version of myself. Shame on me, regardless. So I tweaked that scene too.

The other significant edit I made was in changing the first name of the English-born plantation steward Mr. Cromwell—most characters use his last name—from Byron to Lucas. He’s a tricky man to name because of his duality. (HERE BE POTENTIAL SPOILERS.) Cromwell is gorgeous and brilliant—and ruthless. Multiple characters mistake him for a good guy, even a romantic figure—which is exactly what he wants them to think, because he’s actually a villain.

What would you name this man?

This model is a decent physical match for Cromwell, although his attire is more Regency, a few decades before the 1850s when the character appears in my story.

(Image source: Servian Stock Images via Depositphotos)

In my early drafts, Cromwell’s first name was Lyndon. I liked the idea that “a boy named Sue,” a young man with a “weak” name, became tougher because of it. But in a pivotal scene in Book 4, Cromwell forces a female character to say his first name, and I didn’t want something “wimpy” in this context of sexual threat. Since Cromwell is Byronic—”mad, bad, and dangerous to know” in the immortal words of Lady Caroline Lamb—I changed his name to Byron. But I was never really happy with it; Byron was too on the nose, and it was “de trop” to name him after two larger-than-life English historical figures. (“De trop” = excessive, literally “too much” in French.)

The Cromwell half had to stay. In fact, this is the only character name that hasn’t changed over the course of three decades. As I explain in Book 2, this name is meant to recall the ambitious and ruthless Oliver Cromwell, “the butcher of Drogheda” (the real place in Ireland, not the fictional one in Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds). I also love the sound of Cromwell, the harsh opening and the soft conclusion—back to that duality.

I needed a first name with more subtlety, but I couldn’t find it. Then I listened to the audiobook of Courtney Milan’s A Kiss for Midwinter in-between December 2021 edits, and the name of one of her supporting characters lit a lightbulb in my brain: Lucas! It was perfect! It recalls both Lucifer, a traditional name for the Devil, and Luke from The Thorn Birds. Yet Lucas also sounds proper and sexy. Thank you, Courtney Milan! (Seriously, check out her books. She’s awesome.)

Changing Byron to Lucas created a small domino effect: I had to make sure that my find and replace function didn’t eliminate the times I still wanted to say Byron (the poet). I also had to change the name of a minor character in Book 3 who was called Luke, and I had to make sure that find and replace didn’t eliminate the times I still wanted to say Luke (the saint). Oh, the joys and challenges of being an indie author with technology at my fingertips!

An update to my formatting software, Vellum, also allowed me to add this lovely background image to the first pages of each chapter in my print editions: roses with falling petals. The symbolism is perfect for my garden-inspired love stories.

Please note: although all of these changes are now live on Amazon, they’ll take a few weeks to show up in the copies you can buy from other places like Bookshop.org. It’s complicated! And if you buy a used copy of my books, none of these updates will be present. (I the author and publisher also won’t receive a penny of compensation from such a purchase.)

Why didn’t the name Lucas—or any of these other text changes—occur to me earlier in the three decades I’ve worked on this series? I can only quote the saying: “Hindsight is 20/20.” I’ve been so close to this series for so long, I had whole passages memorized. It’s difficult to edit in such a state. Only several months’ distance and a larger pool of reader feedback have provided me with the perspective I needed.

I do apologize to any readers currently in the middle of The Lazare Family Saga who are tripped up by these changes, in particular Byron Cromwell becoming Lucas Cromwell. Hence this explanatory blog post. As Joseph would say, “Mea culpa.” You have witnessed the imperfect and dynamic creative process. 🙂

Necessary Sins Has a New Cover!

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Being an independent author means a constant, steep learning curve. Most recently, what’s literally kept me up at night is the realization that my beautiful book covers are nevertheless preventing The Lazare Family Saga from reaching readers. In the 21st century, books—especially indie books like mine—are competing in a crowded digital marketplace. A book brand-new to a reader browsing Amazon or Facebook has literally two seconds to communicate “You would like me!” before that reader scrolls past, never to think of it again. Book covers communicate “You would like me” by reminding readers of the books they love and by communicating genre. Beautiful as they may be, my current covers aren’t doing either of those essentials well.

I thought I understood good cover design. I planned my covers for years as I was writing. I even based my cover concept on other historical novels I’d seen. But those covers came from traditional publishers with marketing budgets and/or authors who were already established. I’m trying to reach people who’ve never heard of me, so my covers have to work harder.

I didn’t fully appreciate The Two-Second Rule or the importance of a cover looking good at thumbnail size. In a digital environment, a book isn’t a physical object to be leisurely admired but a tiny postage stamp that needs to work at a glance. My current covers from Bookfly Design are beautiful and they illustrate my books well. Between picture research and fine-tuning, these covers represent years of painstaking labor by both my designer and myself. I love them, they’re works of art, and I’ve got them hanging on my wall.

The four original covers of The Lazare Family Saga

Alas, I’ve learned the hard way that a beautiful work of art does not necessarily make a good book cover. At thumbnail size, these covers aren’t doing their jobs of attracting new readers. There are too many focal points: top image, decorative title plate, and bottom image. People don’t know where to look, so they look away. To quote a marketing adage: “The confused mind says ‘No.'” The first cover, the most important one, is also communicating the wrong things. It’s not saying “antebellum American South” or even “historical fiction” clearly, and many people are mistaking it for genres it’s not.

If you’ve read Necessary Sins, you know why I suggested to my designer that we feature the hands of my priest protagonist, Joseph Lazare. When he’s ordained, his hands are anointed; and when Joseph and his soulmate Tessa touch hands in the book, the moments are erotically charged. But that eroticism is apparent in the cover only if you’ve already read Necessary Sins. To people brand-new to my work, those tender joined hands apparently indicate “This is sweet and clean Christian fiction”—in other words: “There is no on-the-page sex and this book will confirm your faith.” Which is not at all what Necessary Sins is about!

Therefore, in the short term, I worked with my current designer to revise the cover of Necessary Sins so that it more clearly communicates “forbidden love in the antebellum American South involving a Catholic priest.” I was happy to find stock images we could use for both Joseph and Tessa. These images were just uploaded to stock sites in 2020, so they weren’t available when we were designing the first Necessary Sins cover back in 2019.

The new Necessary Sins cover

Can you make out the Spanish moss and the parterre garden behind the woman, typical of my Charleston, SC setting? They aren’t as clear as I’d like, but that’s a saga in and of itself. The woman’s barely-visible attire might also be mistaken for a nightgown. In the original image, she’s fully dressed.

As you may know, chopping off people’s heads is standard practice in historical fiction covers, and it certainly has its advantages. I love the dramatic lighting in the image of this priest in a confessional, but the top half of the model’s head is all wrong for Joseph. The model is a White man with brown hair in a 21st-century style; but if we crop him correctly, he’s more racially ambiguous and can “pass” for Joseph, my black-haired priest who has French and African ancestry and passes as White.

The right mood for Joseph, but the wrong looks (from Depositphotos)

As of this writing, the new cover is live only for the ebook of Necessary Sins. My designer is currently at work on the paperback and hardcover versions. The “hands cover” has become a limited first edition—so if you love it like I do, now would be the time to buy it. 😉

Prefer the ebook? You’re in luck: my shiny new cover and all its contents are on sale for just 99 cents/pence through December 8, 2021. I do like how the man and woman are separated on the new Book One of the series and united on Book Four. It’s great symbolism.

The Lazare Family Saga with the new Necessary Sins cover

However, this new version of Necessary Sins doesn’t solve the thumbnail problem or pass the Two-Second Test. In order to fix those, after much figurative hair-pulling and literal gnashing of teeth (damn TMD), I have decided to hire a new cover designer to completely redo the whole Lazare Family Saga series. I hope we’ll end up with people on all the covers, and that we’ll be able to include their full faces. After weeks of searching, I’ve found some promising new stock images.

We can’t use the shot of the priest in the confessional with the dramatic lighting, because I’m determined that Joseph will finally have the right skin tone on my upcoming covers. This is impossible with an unedited stock image, because light-skinned Black men in cassocks simply don’t exist on stock sites. But my new designer should be able to do a “head swap” and dress a light-skinned Black model in a cassock, given the right images. Have I found them? Will my designer find them? Will we go in a totally different direction with the new covers?

Only 2022 knows.

Your turn! What do you think of the new Necessary Sins cover? What would you like to see on my redesigned Lazare Family Saga covers? What are some of your favorite historical fiction or family saga covers? Are you an author with a cover revision saga of your own? I’d love to hear from you!

Do I Get An A+?

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Firstly, I am thrilled to share that Amazon.com selected Necessary Sins, the first book in my Lazare Family Saga, as one of their Prime Reads for the months of September, October, and November 2021. If you’re a U.S. member of Amazon Prime, that means you can read the Kindle edition of Necessary Sins for free now through November 30, 2021. Alas, this offer is available only to U.S. Prime members. Amazon makes the rules, not I!

Please help me spread the word to other U.S. Prime members who enjoy historical fiction, family sagas, stories of forbidden love, or stories set in Charleston! Click on the image below or here’s the link to Necessary Sins on Amazon.com.

Secondly, I’m glad I was able to get together my A+ Content before my Prime Read months—but now there are considerably more eyes on my book pages, and I’m second-guessing my choices!

What is A+ Content, you ask? It’s an area on each Amazon book page where the publisher can add more information and/or pretty images. This area used to be available only to big names, but now Amazon is allowing all publishers to use it—including indie publishers like yours truly.

We have to follow certain parameters, and we get five spots per item to fill with A+ content, which must be approved by Amazon folks. I had to decide what aspects of my fiction to feature and then hunt down images. I wanted a common theme across all four of my books. I decided to focus on my settings and have my captions be a narrative—but I had to avoid spoilers.

Below, I’ve shared all of my A+ content. The titles are links to how the images actually appear on Amazon, under the “From the Publisher” section on each book page. Each novel has four unique images followed by a series image that I used for all the books.

Any text in the A+ images has to be legible on both desktop computers and mobile devices. Therein lies the rub. In making the text large enough for mobile devices, I may have made it too large to look good on desktops. What do you think? Is my A+ text too shouty and overwhelming? Should I dial it back a little?

Book One of the Lazare Family Saga: Necessary Sins

Book Two of the Lazare Family Saga: Lost Saints

Book Three of the Lazare Family Saga: Native Stranger

Book Four of the Lazare Family Saga: Sweet Medicine

What did you think? I agonized over every detail, from images to colors to fonts, and I want to make sure my A+ content is fabulous before I expand it to the UK, Canadian, and Australian Amazon sites.

In this post, at least one image for each book is clickable and will take you to a secret page of behind-the-scenes info. I purchased most of the images from a stock site called DepositPhotos, and I added text using Canva.

Finally, on the Amazon pages for Necessary Sins and Lost Saints, you may have noticed that these first two books in The Lazare Family Saga are now available in hardcover! Native Stranger and Sweet Medicine will be in hardcover soon. The conversion process is lengthy and complicated, but the end product is both beautiful and durable. I can hardly wait till the set is complete!

What I’m Working On Now

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Now that I’ve published all four books in my Lazare Family Saga, I’ve had interviewers and readers asking about my next project. My answer will disappoint many. It disappoints me too. I wish I had the luxury to write full-time, to dive into something new.

The reality is, I do not. My time and energy are severely limited by the “real job” that keeps a roof over my head—not to mention all the other unavoidable crap that eats up your “free time” when you’re an adult. Scintillating activities like car maintenance and dishwashing. That’s why the Lazare Family Saga took me nearly three decades to research and revise. Most weeks, I have only a few hours to devote to something of my choosing. That’s it.

The other reality is: I had to publish this series independently, and I’ve spent thousands of dollars I could barely afford in order to get the Lazare Family Saga into readers’ hands. I simply can’t do that all over again. This series has truly been a labor of love and my life’s work.

My challenge now is to make the most of my magnum opus. I need to devote my precious few free hours to learning marketing, which I absolutely loathe. But I have to reach new readers and make the last three decades worthwhile.

I’m also planning new formats: hardcovers and audiobooks. I’m particularly excited about the latter. I adore audiobooks and listen to an average of two per week. Audiobooks are how I experience 99% of my fiction and much of my nonfiction—it goes back to that limited free time. With audiobooks, I can multitask.

Vintage books with headphones plugged into them

Once upon a time, I dreamed that a miniseries would be made of my novels—after all, miniseries inspired me. I know now this won’t ever happen. But if I can find a great narrator, audiobooks will be the next best thing. Unfortunately, great narrators are expensive, so it will be a slow process.

I’ve had people try to tell me I have more books in me, but I don’t think I do. I’ve filled this series with the things I love, and the struggles and triumphs of the Lazare family are extremely personal for me. I feel as if I wrote every word of this saga with my blood.

If you enjoy the Lazare Family Saga, please recommend it to other readers, and please leave reviews of my books. I cannot adequately express how important those are or how much they mean to me. And please consider rereading my series in a few years. I’ve carefully crafted each scene and line with foreshadowing, callbacks, subtlety, and symbolism. I think you’ll get more out of my books the second time. Savor them!

Red feather pen writing "With Love" in blood

Please note: While there are other authors named Elizabeth Bell, the only books by yours truly are Necessary Sins, Lost Saints, Native Stranger, and Sweet Medicine, the four books of the Lazare Family Saga.

The Sweetest Medicine

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The title of the fourth and final book in my series, Sweet Medicine, used to be the title for the whole story, back when I thought that story was a single novel. I like the phrase because it’s a seeming oxymoron—a pattern I ended up using for all my titles. How can medicine be sweet? Isn’t it an unpleasant necessity?

I also like that the word medicine has multiple meanings; and on the surface, those meanings are in opposition. Broadly, medicine refers to either science or spirituality. My saga involves both these definitions, rooted in my two primary settings: Charleston, South Carolina and the American West.

One of my main Charleston characters is a doctor. He represents the “science” part of medicine. He attends medical school in Paris and practices in Charleston. He dissects cadavers, uses a microscope, and prescribes drugs. In Sweet Medicine, this character performs a procedure on himself that is not only straight from Victorian medical texts but also utterly horrifying. This medicine is anything but sweet.

An engraving of the human heart that could be from a Victorian text and a vintage microscope

My chapters set in the American West focus on the Cheyenne Indians, or Zizistas as they call themselves. For the Zizistas, the word medicine can be an adjective that means “holy,” as in the tribe’s sacred possessions, the Medicine Arrows. If someone or something has medicine, it has spiritual power. Zizistas medicine also involves healing, but of the whole person, body and soul.

Even the phrase Sweet Medicine comes from the Zizistas. It’s the name of a Zizistas prophet who predicted the coming of white men. Sweet Medicine himself was named after a medicinal plant.

The word medicine has other meanings that I unpack in my work. One of these is bound to surprise you. Sweet Medicine is about healing many different kinds of wounds, wounds that go all the way back to Book 1 in the series. Ultimately, love is the sweetest and most powerful medicine for my characters.

Cover of the novel Sweet Medicine by Elizabeth Bell
Sweet Medicine releases in just one week!

Why Go Indie?

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The short answer is: I had no choice.

The slightly longer answer: If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t know my novels exist.

But let’s back up a moment. You may be asking yourself not why but “what is indie?” It’s a term that’s also used in music and film. “Indie” means “this artwork is independently produced; it isn’t bankrolled by a large company and isn’t beholden to their demands.” Indie artists are usually a little different; we don’t quite fit the mold demanded of our contracted colleagues.

In my case, “indie” is short for “independent author.” This is our preferred identifier because it signifies that we are professionals. We don’t just slap a first draft on Amazon and expect the adoring public to flock to it. It’s fine to call us self-publishers, but don’t call us vanity publishers. We know our work has worth, but we can also take constructive criticism. We know we can’t do it all by ourselves. We have editors and cover designers. We have printers, but we are our own publishers. We’ve cut out the middle man between ourselves and our readers.

Now, for the why. At the age of fourteen, when I vowed to become a published author, I thought I’d be “traditionally published” by a major press. I thought I’d have a literary agent who’d be like my fairy godmother. I thought the title pages and spines of my novels would say Hachette or St. Martin’s. I thought my novels would be in brick and mortar bookstores. I thought my publisher would send me flowers on my release date, and I’d go on a national book signing tour.

Yes, I really thought like this: I might not have much, but like Cinderella, if I only worked hard enough, eventually my fairy godmother (literary agent) would reward me.

None of that has happened or likely ever will. After almost three decades of researching, writing, and revising my Lazare Family Saga project, I spent four years seeking traditional publication for the first book in the series, Necessary Sins. I researched how to query literary agents and which agents were the best fit for my work. I wrote and rewrote my query letter, sent query after query, and pitched to literary agents in person at writing conferences. I’m an introvert, so the latter was particularly terrifying. In all, I approached well over 100 agents. Some editors at publishing houses allow you to query them directly. When my agent well ran dry, I tried that too, submitting to about 15 editors.

I got a few nibbles. My biggest excitement was the enthusiasm of an agent at Writers House, who called my work “masterful.” She imagined she could sell it as a hardcover original. (That’s a big deal and was part of my dream.) She requested a “partial,” the opening chapters of Necessary Sins. The agent then requested the full manuscript, which she received while she was attending a music festival. She related how she frantically searched for WiFi so she could download the rest of my novel and find out what happened next. We had long conversations over the phone.

But neither this interaction nor any other led to a contract. The most frustrating thing about querying is that authors rarely get a why. More than half of the agents and editors I queried didn’t bother to respond, which is typical in the publishing business. Most of the others sent form rejections, the same canned response they send to other hopeful writers, whether those writers followed all their guidelines and were querying a project in the agent/editor’s preferred genre or whether the writer sent gobbledygook. “Not right for our list,” etc. etc. ad infinitum.

Knock till your knuckles are bloody. The gatekeepers aren’t listening.

By pitching in person and speaking to other querying writers in my genre, eventually I was able to cobble together a why, which came down to: “Your work is risky. Agents and editors are afraid of risk; they want an easy sell. You are a knee-jerk rejection.” Why is my work risky?

  1. The agents and editors who claim they’re seeking historical fiction really want women’s fiction in a historical setting. Preferably a 20th century setting. In other words, a female protagonist, and she’d better be ahead of her time to make her “relatable.” My protagonist in Necessary Sins is—gasp—a man, and he’s very much a 19th-century man. (Read this blog post to understand my why.) The Publishing Industry knows most readers are women, and it thinks women want to read about women. So the moment an agent/editor/their assistant realized my main character was a man, they rejected my novel.
  2. My work is “too long.” Necessary Sins is about 140,000 words, which works out to nearly 500 pages in a paperback. This isn’t really that long, considering I was inspired by epic historical fiction / family sagas from the 1970s and 1980s that are nearly twice that length. But the 21st century is the age of Twitter. The Publishing Industry has decided that readers have short attention spans. They want debut novels of about 80,000 words. Shorter is even better! Longer books cost more to print, so if they fail, the publisher has lost more money. Unless you know someone in publishing and/or you’re a man (preferably both), publishers don’t care if your novel is a meticulously edited masterpiece that really needs to be longer than average. The moment an agent/editor/their assistant realized my book was over 100,000 words (the absolute limit), they rejected my novel.
  3. My work is not “own voices.” Many of my point-of-view characters are people of color and I am white. It doesn’t matter how many years of research I’ve done or how nuanced my characters are. It doesn’t matter that the Lazares’ ancestry is mostly white and they are so light-skinned they can “pass.” This is the reason that Writers House agent finally rejected me; I am a marketing problem. At this point, agents/editors/assistants probably reject all queries with characters of color in which the author doesn’t declare her/himself to be “own voices.” Even if I made it past the first two hurdles, this one is insurmountable—at least for an unknown debut author with no connections in publishing.

So after almost three decades of dreaming and labor, after more than three years of pleading at the pearly gates of publishing, I finally had to admit that my work wouldn’t be traditionally published any time in the foreseeable future.

Anna Lea Merritt’s “Love Locked Out” (1890)

Now for most writers, this would be a temporary setback. They would have another completed project or at least another story idea. This other novel would be more marketable. Then maybe down the line, once they’d acquired an agent and publisher and proved themselves via the success of the other project, the author’s agent might potentially accept the risky project later on.

But I don’t have any other novels. The Lazare Family Saga is my passion project, my labor of love. I have sacrificed everything else in my life for twenty-seven years to complete this story. I don’t have the time, energy, or money to do that again, and no other characters are demanding my attention the way the Lazares did. I have health issues and a full-time job that leave me only slivers of time for writing. I can’t wait around for a bolt of lightning that may never strike.

If I’d queried for another couple of decades, there is a teeny, tiny chance an agent would have thought my work worth the risks. But then she’d have to find an editor who agreed with her. And that editor would have to convince her publishing house. I have a better chance of being struck by lightning. And the more I learned about traditional publishing, the less keen I was to offer it my soul—and my writing is my soul. This may be partly sour grapes, I admit. But I have heard so many horror stories. There are no fairy godmothers in publishing, but there are a lot of mercenaries who don’t care a fig about authors.

Maya Angelou wrote: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” For me, the agony of an unpublished story is even greater. You’ve done all the work. You’ve forged a completed novel you’re proud of. You believe it’s an important novel, and the people who read it praise it—but that handful of people are the only ones who’ll ever know your novel exists.

Unless you stop clinging to those pearly gates and find another way. Unless you go indie. That is why.

My arms are tired, but I’ll get there!