C Gockel Writes

Book Review: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

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$2.99 as of April 27, 2023
Click for current price: Amazon, Nook, iBooks, Kobo, GooglePlay, and Scribd (as an Audiobook).

I read this book The Left Hand of Darkness over the weekend. I think, with the title, I was worried it would be a little more somber than it was, and it took me a while to start, but once I got past the third page I was hooked. The world building is immense, but Le Guin’s writing style is so engaging it never bogs down.

In the future, Earth’s humans have joined a sort of consortium with all the races of men spread across the stars by a progenitor race. All the planets in the consortium are self-governing. Since there is no faster-than-light travel in this universe, trade does happen between the planets, but it is extremely limited. Primarily the trade is of ideas.

The consortium is reaching out to a new planet of people, on the planet called Winter, which has been stuck for quite some time in an ice age, and the author has very carefully constructed a society around this reality (probably based on reading about Inuit and other northern people’s natural adaptations.) Unlike all other planets in the consortium, the people of Winter are morphologically aesexual, except for a few days each month when they become either male or female. Le Guin does believe gender influences psychology, and the book explores how all the people of a world being neither male or female most of the time influences their behavior.

Winter’s people have reached approximately a 1950s stage of technological advancement, when an envoy from the consortium arrives. This is the envoy’s story as he tries to open up Winter to the trade of ideas–Winter does have things to share, and a point of the story is that all people do, even the seemingly more primitive ones. It is also the story of one of Winter’s people who wants to see him succeed at his goal.

Unfortunately for the envoy and his benefactor, the rest of Winter thinks the envoy is lying, and great many of them want him dead. That is the source of the book’s adventure and intrigue.

The themes of opposites run through the book: darkness and light, religious and non-religious, male and female. It’s a beautiful book, and I do wish I could find out more about the Envoy’s later life after the book’s end. I highly recommend it. The Left Hand of Darkness is traditionally published, but it’s also a classic. That means you’ll probably find it at your local library. I got it through Overdrive at my local library. It’s also available at Amazon, Nook, iBooks, Kobo, GooglePlay, and Scribd (as an Audiobook).

Mistakes were made …

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So this year I’m looking at making approximately 26k less than I made last year. Thankfully, I made more than I needed last year, didn’t spend the money on hats, and am going to be fine.

*Leaves chair, knocks on wood*

Okay, I’m back. Anywho, in the interest of full disclosure and helping to save others my pain, here’s what I think went wrong:

Mistake #1: A new series in a new genre that might not be a fit for me

I had this grand idea that I could release standalones in my I Bring the Fire universe and then have four different books to advertise and use as funnels for I Bring the Fire. I also really wanted to write these books, too. It wasn’t just “give me the money!”

Anywho, in September of 2017 I released Soul Marked, After the Fire Book 1, a standalone, PNR-ish, fantasy in my I Bring the Fire Universe. It got great reviews, but it took three months to earn out in Kindle Unlimited (unlike Archangel Down which I released at $3.99 and earned out first month.) Granted, I released Soul Marked at 99-cents but didn’t promote it to anyone but my list and a few NL swaps. I was planning on saving the advertisers for book 2.

In April I released Magic After Midnight. It has gotten more love and gushing from my fans than just about anything I’ve ever written. A “wicked” stepmother, a Night Elf (please don’t call him a vampire!), two villains getting their happy ever after … What is not to love? Well, no one but my really devoted fans picked it up.

I think both books maybe lacked the “beats” of a romance, and are more fantasy maybe? But they’re too romantic for a lot of fantasy lovers. (Although my male fans who read them really enjoyed both, so I don’t know …)

Which brings me to my next mistake …

Mistake #2: Not releasing Magic into Kindle Unlimited

I don’t have 1,000 peeps who will buy a book in a new series right away. I made the USA Today List, but that was on the back of a BookBub on a box set of the first four books in IBF. I need peeps who’ve never heard of me before to read my books. KU really helps with that when it comes to new readers.

I thought that I wasn’t going to be able to release Magic into Kindle Unlimited because part of it exists wide in an anthology. I have since gotten written permission from Amazon to put it in KU since less than 2% of Magic After Midnight is actually out there. It may be less, I’ve added a lot of detail, changed things up, including the POV in scenes that exist in the short story.

To help propel it out there “in the wild wide” I released Soul Marked wide for the first time and booked ALL the advertisers … and even got a 99-cent BookBub too!

Gonna say right here … all the 99-cent ads except for BookBub were a huge waste of money for a wide book in a two book series.Without the page reads, I did not come close to earning out. (BookBub did earn out.) I wouldn’t have booked the smaller sites but I never thought I’d get a BookBub on Soul Marked. But sure enough, I went wide, and boom: BookBub. The lesson here is apply to BookBub first.

Mistake #3: Not going into Kindle Unlimited immediately after BookBub

If I’d gone immediately into BookBub while my rank was still high I think I would have made a lot more simply by virtue of page reads. Soul Marked and Magic in particular are both long books. But I didn’t. I wanted to see if I could make it without KU. I released just as page reads were getting stripped, and I was nervous. (I am back in KU and STILL nervous.) I tried using Instafreebie magnets to get people to the books. The original Magic short story definitely helped … but not enough. The preview I put on IF didn’t help at all.

Mistake #4: Kindle Unlimited box sets aren’t going to be a savior anymore.

Back in 2016 I was in an amazing box set with Lindsay Buroker, Chris Fox, M.R. Forbes and others. It did phenomenally well, better than I could have done on my own. I thought after the only exclusive content rule was announced (enforced?) that I could always put my standalones in EXCLUSIVE box sets when sales started to lag. I did that with Soul Marked from January 11th-April 11th. In the end, I made about as much money in the box as I would have on my own and it was a lot more work. There just aren’t enough folks with a standalone novel to put into a box set, and we didn’t meet the 3,600 page limit and didn’t max out page reads.

Mistake #5: Not writing a longer series

Every single download of Archangel Down (the first book in my sci-fi “trilogy”) is worth 60% of a single Wolves download (the first book in IBF my USAT series.) I have only two paid books in the Archangel series. In IBF I have one novella, two short stories, and five novels. The thing is it’s HARDER and more expensive to get sci-fi downloads. It seems to be less popular than UF, and newsletters don’t perform as well. If I earn more on each download, it will even out. The way to earn more is to write a longer series.

Mistake #6: Advertising Blitzcrieg changes

Every month from late 2013 thru the end of 2017 I would have advertising Blitzkriegs. I would line up a heavy hitter like Freebooksy, Robin Reads, BookBarbarian, BookSends, Riffle, or BookGorilla with some not so heavy hitters that are good values. I would never use any advertiser more than once in 6 months. This year, I decided I would try something new: lining up all the non-BookBub advertisers over the course of a few short days. This isn’t a good idea. I didn’t get the absolute number of downloads I expected and now I can’t advertise either Archangel or Wolves with newsletter services for another few months. Which means that the new book I have in the Archangel series will have to wait until October to release it if I want advertising of my first in series to be effective.

Mistake #7: Standalones don’t sell as well (unless you’re a better writer than me?)

Archangel and IBF have overarching storylines. I think that really helped drive sales to the next in series. Also, it really makes permafree a viable strategy. 99-cents is so much more expensive to advertise with and the results are so much less spectacular.

A few things that went right:

  • Archangel Down is doing well wide. Two series that do decently is a pretty monumental achievement. I’m overwhelmed and grateful to all my fans.
  • Soul Marked is a great funnel to I Bring the Fire despite few shared characters. The month I got the 99-cent BookBub I did no other advertising for I Bring the Fire and my downloads didn’t go down but my sell-thru increased. So my original idea wasn’t totally daft. Sadly, except for BookBub (and probably ENT) it was still too expensive to advertise at 99-cents with a wide book.

How I’m adapting:

  • I’m writing more in Archangel. I’ve got book 4 with my beta readers right now, and I’m about ready to start writing book 5.
  • Book 4 in Archangel is a STANDALONE, I’ll be able to advertise it everywhere, even FKTips when the time comes but it will still be on the same series page.
  • Book 5 might be readable as a standalone too. Same characters, but I have in mind an awesome action packed intro sequence that might explain the characters and universe pretty well.
  • Soul Marked and Magic are in KU. I plan to advertise Magic and Soul Marked with Countdown deals. Hopefully that will make advertising at 99-cents not as expensive and boosts downloads of I Bring the Fire.
  • Returning to my previous advertising schedule/strategy.
  • Getting cheaper health insurance this fall. I may go with an HMO with the good hospital near my house instead of the POS I currently have that doesn’t cover the good hospital, isn’t as convenient, and is more expensive.
  • Learning to update WordPress myself. I used to be a techie.  >:(

I will probably come back and write one more book in the After the Fire trilogy, because there is a character/situation that won’t get out of my brain. But it might be a few years. It will be a standalone though, and the series has no momentum anyway, so I think it will be okay. Then I’ll box up the whole trilogy, and hopefully get a ‘Bub on it and more sales to IBF. Funnels are still king!

So you want to be a writer …

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A tweenager recently sent me an email asking me some questions about being a writer. I thought I might post them below, as I’ve been asked them before. 

  1. What made you want to become a author? 

    I did not want to become an author. I enjoyed writing non-fiction and fiction when I was your age, but I didn’t think I could make a living as a writer. I like food, and not worrying about how to pay bills. I still think about getting a “real” job a lot. Coding isn’t necessarily more lucrative, but it is more dependable.

  2. Do you have any advice for becoming an author?

    There are three pieces of advice I’d give to any writer.
    The first is to read and write! Read anything you like–fiction or non-fiction, in your native language, or your second language if you are studying in school. Think about what it is in the books and articles you read that makes you like them. And write. Always write. Not for the hope of being famous or for money, just because you love writing. If you don’t love writing, don’t become an author.
    The second piece of advice I would give is to find something else you enjoy doing, something that will pay the bills while you build your writing career. For someone your age, that would translate into not just studying creative writing, but also studying history and science (fantastic for story ideas!), art or photography and at least take a music appreciation class (studying the appearance of things and sounds will help you describe scenes more vividly),  and mathematics. The last one, mathematics, makes artists groan, but it is so important for all artists of every type, especially if you want to make a living with art. So many artists don’t understand money, and they wind up getting taken advantage of, or they aren’t capable of analyzing their sales to make informed financial decisions.
    Working hard at all your subjects achieves two things–you learn how to work hard, and you might just find something that you like and are good at that makes a fine “day job” while you build your writing career. It turned out, I am a decent coder. I know writers who were lawyers, accountants, nurses, editors, graphic designers, marketing directors, businesswomen, and more. There are only a few writers out there who just emerged from high school or college as writers. You might be that person, but most likely not. Prepare for the not.
    The third piece of advice I would be is to live your life. Travel, make mistakes, meet people, talk to them, fall in love, and have children if you want children. These are things that should help your career in the long run, not hinder it. It will give you a greater understanding of the human condition and will allow you to write with greater empathy and compassion.

  3. What is your favorite genre to write about? 

    I love fantasy with a sci-fi element, and writing technology as though it is magic in sci-fi. I like all my fiction to have historical references. I can’t write without writing adventure. And I love romance that is integral to the plot, but not the whole plot.

  4. What is your favorite book that is not one of your’s?

    I cannot name my favorite book–that’s like asking a mother who her favorite child is.

    The first book I remember reading was Pirate’s Promise when I was just out of third grade. (I have dyslexia and reading came late for me.) I loved the adventure in it, and the hero who was determined to do the right thing. It also made me realize that adults could be stupid. At the end of the book, the boy who was avoiding becoming an indentured servant goes to live with a family in the deep South–a place with slaves! Couldn’t he have gone to someplace like Massachusetts?

    Black Beauty was the next book I remember reading–I love writing from non-human points of view, and maybe that is why. (Sleipnir has his own story in I Bring the Fire, it is called, The Slip. Carl Sagan, the ten-legged, venomous alien weasel … err, “werfle” from my Archangel Project series has his own story, too. It’s called Carl Sagan’s Hunt for Intelligent Life in the Universe.)

    I read all of Robert Aspirin’s Myth series soon after those–mostly because a friend I met at camp was his niece and she had a box of Advanced Reader Copies. Those taught me that books could be funny. I read all those books the summer between third and fourth grade. I read The Prydain Chronicles and the Westmark Trilogy by Lloyd Alexander soon after fourth grade started. Those taught me that books could be funny, lyrical, exciting, and deep. And then I just took off on a tear!

    There were many books I read between fourth grade and when I began writing. I think On A Pale Horse by Piers Anthony probably influenced my desire to write from the misunderstood immortal’s point of view. Dr. Zhivago made me realize I could like a human who did things I’d normally find distasteful. (The title character was unfaithful to his wife.) Dan Simmon’s Hyperion Cantos, Lois McMaster’s Bujold’s Paladin of Souls, and Raising the Stones made me realize I could use sci-fi and fantasy to discus theology in ways that were more fun than discussing theology. (Not to diss Bujold’s Vorksigian Saga. Shards of Honor has one of the best love scenes ever.) I really enjoyed several non fiction books about China and Japan: Wild Swans in particular, and a lot of really dense texts, Death Ritual in Late Imperial Early Modern China particularly stands out in my memory. I read books about economics and psychology too: Charles Wheelan, Steven Pinker, Daniel H. Pink, Malcolm Gladwell, Hernando DeSoto, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen Dubner) and Sharon Brownlee all can make non-fiction riveting. (Lately I’ve discovered Alexis Clark’s Enemies in Love. Fantastic historical documentary of racial segregation during WWII.)

  5. Do you have any writing tips?

    The only tips I have for writing are to write something every day. It doesn’t have to be fiction. It can be a letter, or an email, a book report, science report, anything. Also, don’t be afraid of feedback. It’s a hugely essential part of growth; as is learning which feedback to heed and which to ignore.

I hope this has been helpful. Now get writing!

 

Book Review: Enemies in Love

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Enemies in Love: a German POW, a Black Nurse, and an Unlikely Romance A few weeks back I saw an interview with this book’s author and was fascinated. I spied the book at the Chicago Public Library, so I swooped in and grabbed it. Enemies in Love is not really a “romance,” it is a non-fiction book about the slow integration of the country and the issues surrounding it, and how those issues swirled around one particular couple, Elinor and Frederick, a black nurse and a German POW who met at a POW camp during WWII. It is amazing, and sometimes really heartbreaking, and reveals a lot of “hidden” history I knew nothing about.

For instance, I had no idea that during WW2 at one point there was a shortage of 10,000 nurses. This meant that our hospitals in Europe and Asia weren’t properly staffed and ready to accommodate men and women who were grievously injured. Nurses are critical to patient care (For any who doubt the importance of nurses: http://www.nber.org/papers/w23174), and this likely led to unnecessary deaths.

And I do mean unnecessary. There weren’t allowed to be any more black nurses than an arbitrary quota. Also, they were only allowed to serve black service members until the very end of the war. Thousands of black nurses who passed the same nursing exams that white nurses took applied to join the army, but were turned away. It’s really scary that leaders in our military were willing to risk the lives of young GIs rather than look past prejudice. (Side note: my grandfather served aboard a bomber as a gunner during WWII. He risked his life every time he went up in a plane, but he also almost died on the ground of pneumonia. I had to put the book down for a while after reading about the ‘manufactured’ nurse shortage.)

The book is also an excellent account of our POW camps. Despite some abuses, the U.S. actually did a good job of treating our POWs humanely. The same cannot be said of our allies, and certainly not of our enemies (a friend’s grandfather survived the Bataan Death March–it is not an event you ever get over.) It was distressing to read how POWs in the U.S. were often treated better than our own people, but it also showed how such endeavors can be humane.

I also really enjoyed how the book documented the main couple’s families. Elinor Powell’s family had been upper middle class for two generations before the war broke out, and it was fascinating to see how they managed this before the Civil Rights movement. They had a strong work ethic, but it was also largely a function of where they lived: a small suburban town called Milton, Massachusetts. Her grandfather had been a trusted servant of a white family–so trusted they gave him a beautiful house. He was a barber, but quite skilled as a craftsman in general, and helped build homes for his white neighbors. His wife was an escaped slave, and their son grew up among their white neighbors as a popular and appreciated member of the community. Elinor’s father got an apprenticeship, but when WWI broke out, he went overseas to fight for his country. He came home, got a civil servant’s job, joined the local fire brigade, and helped out his neighbors when the recession hit and he was well off and they were suffering … basically he was an all around great guy that people liked. He married a black Southern school teacher who had grown up under very different circumstances.

As a result of her location, and her parent’s hard work and belief in education, Elinor grew up in pre-Civil Rights America without ever really experiencing racism and never knowing poverty. Joining the segregated military and serving on a segregated base was a shock. The book goes to pains to mention that not all of the Army bases were segregated, a lot depended on the officer in charge, and some of those officers took very courageous stands not just on the bases, but in the surrounding towns. The officer in charge of Elinor’s base however, was terrible … which might be why he got the job guarding over POWs to begin with.

And then there was Frederick’s family … You know how most books and movies feature either Jewish protagonists or Christian Germans who fought against the Nazis? Well, Frederick’s parents were straight up Nazis. It was interesting to read about them for that reason. When I meet people who are genuinely racist in this day and age, they are never only racist against one group–they hate a lot of people and have a lot of, well, let’s just call them “issues.” The same can be said of Fredrick’s family … his dad was a successful businessman who used the war to get rich. He was also a serial philanderer who did nothing to hide his affairs and was never home. Frederick’s mom was a socialite who must have been hurt by her husband’s actions, but didn’t fight it. She also really didn’t care about her children as much as she cared about her social life. Despite their faults, they had Frederick, and he was not perfect, but he was a completely different person–and as such, was a complete disappointment to his parents. He loved art and jazz. The author speculates that he began to associate African American culture with all the emotion and love that was missing in his home. Maybe. However, the picture on the cover doesn’t really do Elinor justice; she was striking. It may have been just her beauty, and the fact that she was a nurse and so obviously intelligent and caring that made Frederick walk up to her the first time he laid eyes on her and say, “You should know my name. Someday I’m going to be your husband.”

It’s a great book, and I highly recommend it for it’s honest portrayal of real families dealing with real events.

You can get it on Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. It is also available at Scribd (for the moment, their catalog is variable.)

Book Review: A Hope Divided by Alyssa Cole

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A Hope Divided A Novel of the Civil War by Alyssa ColeI picked up A Hope Divided with some trepidation. You know how you read a really good book, and after reading it you feel 1) Bereft 2) Certain that no other book can live up to your expectations. 3) You worry that the next book will be the same book with different names slapped on the previous characters. I was in that sort of post book high low after reading An Extraordinary Union.

A Hope Divided wasn’t An Extraordinary Union … it was better. It has all the things I loved about An Extraordinary Union: forbidden love, high stakes romance, history, and characters I really liked, but I think that I could identify with the characters a little more. An Extraordinary Union’s hero and heroine are based on real people, but they’re so blazingly heroic that in some ways it’s harder to identify with them. Hope’s Marlie and Ewan are more vulnerable; they are heroic in the story, but it is more because they have to be. They are both quiet individuals who’d probably be happier in a lab, but the war has forced them outside their comfort zones and they’re trying to make the best of it.

A little about the story: Marlie Lynch is half white and half black, a free black woman living with the very wealthy white half of her family in the Carolinas. She exists in a strange parallel world. She has the benefits of wealth and freedom, but the limitations of her race and sex. Her black mother was a “root woman,” and practitioner of “hoo-doo.” Marlie has turned the practical parts of her mother’s knowledge into a herbalist business.

I’m going to just say right here, that I was really impressed by how the author Alyssa Cole combined science and superstition in this book. She could have made magic real, or she could have dismissed it. Instead she walked a very narrow middle road and did a wonderful job showing how for Marlie’s slave ancestors, magic was really about trying to take control of their lives in a world that offered them few chances to do so. It also shows though, that some of their knowledge wasn’t just superstition.

Like a lot of romance novel series, the two male heroes are related. That may seem contrived to those unfamiliar with the genre–and indeed it is a little bit, but hey, it is a romance novel and I really liked Ewan. He isn’t like his brother at all, which is part of the reason this book is so good. He has a much more scientific mind, and he’s a joy to read. I’m not going to say too much more about that …

This book could be subtitled “Introverts in Love.” Alyssa Cole has captured the minds of two people who have very complex inner lives, and brings them out into the world. Danger runs high throughout the book. The romance is believable and incredibly sweet. (There are smexy scenes, so if those aren’t your cuppa, you might not like it. All of those scenes were well done and fit the characters, developed the story, and were more than just needing some nookie just because … )

Wonderful book. If you like historical romance definitely pick it up. It is traditionally published, and a little more expensive at $9.99 … but worth it. If you’re on a budget, it should be fairly easy to get your library to pick it up.


Happy reading!