Welcome to the Indie Author Feature with Coffee Time Romance and More. This week, we’re showcasing Lisa Beth Darling. Today, Ms. Darling shares insight into her novel, On a Hot Summer Night.
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Doctor Richard Mason is alone and bored one hot summer night when he decides to take a jaunt down to Tony’s Bar to cool off. Little does he know things are about to get a whole lot hotter when a redheaded vixen sets her sights on him for a lustful one night stand. Waking in the morning wanting more, at the very least to know her name, he wonders if this is the end of a very sultry night or just the beginning of things to come.
A note from the author
I was a self-publishing Indie Author before anyone knew what that was. In fact, I was ahead of the e-book curve before anyone ever heard of a Kindle or a Nook. Let me explain, while I began my writing career in the 4th grade writing, of course, all-original fiction, I came to the Internet in my early 30’s and discovered an outlet for the fanfiction I had been writing. I knew I could never get it published in any traditional manner so I gave it away on my website. There one could read online—and I mean *online* as my pages were encoded to prevent theft—or one could ask me for a .pdf copy of my stories. Many people didn’t understand this and were very upset with me, after all, they were used to being able to copy/paste/print (and put up on other sites) any story they wanted. Despite the naysayers, I went on that way, very happily, for nearly a decade before returning to all-original fiction and bowing out of the fandoms I’d been a part of.
When my first subsequent novel, “Dream Weaver”, was finished I tried to take it down the traditional road to publishing but, sadly, found that nothing had changed in the ten years or so that I’d been out of that game. Frustrated with agents, publishers, and more red tape than was needed to hang a horse I began considering “self-publishing”.
At first, I felt like a failure and others were happy to reinforce that idea for me, until I realized that I had been doing this for years just on a smaller scale. I wasn’t a failure with my fandom stories, people loved them. I won more than 20 awards for those stories. So I was determined not to feel like a failure with my original fiction either. So I asked myself, above all else, what is it I want to accomplish here? The answer was simple; to tell good stories and get them into the hands of people who would enjoy them.
My mother always called me stubborn but I prefer head-strong. With no one to guide me, wading into self-publishing wasn’t an easy process. I had to learn to use CreateSpace for paperbacks. I had to learn how to use PhotoShop to make a decent book cover instead of the plain old banners I had been using on my site for my fanfiction stories. Then I had to learn how to use Kindle, Nook, Smashwords and a whole host of other e-book retail sites. I learned how to format my files and researched pricing—I still believe that $0.99 is far too cheap for any story other than a short story. I dove into promotions via guest spots, reviews, blog hops, social media, author appearances, and more.
Today I have 17 books on the market ranging from erotic fiction to non-fiction. It’s been a long and interesting road. I’ve learned many new skills and met lots of wonderful people from readers to other authors. I no longer feel like a failure, instead, I’m very proud of my stories and all that I have been able to accomplish being an Indie Author.
Find Lisa Beth on the web:
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