Time for Change: Cayau: People Among Us – Now on Kickstarter!

Hi everyone! Welcome back to Too Many Books to Count—I’m so glad you stopped by. As we talked about last week, this month I’m spending some time telling you all about the changes coming up for me, both personally and professionally. And I’m starting with the most important ones.

Which is where today’s topic comes in.

Cayau: People Among Us – Now on Kickstarter!

There was one thing that was really breaking my heart, when I received contract termination notices from RAD Writing, when the company decided to break up. My beloved series, my Druid Novels, was supposed to release its finale, this year. This was meant to be the year that you all finally got to read how the story ends. This was supposed to be the year that we all said goodbye to the druids… and now that wasn’t going to happen.

I spent a long time, talking with the rest of the RAD Writing team and coming up with every idea under the sun, until we settled on this one. Crowdfunding.

If you’ve never heard of crowdfunding… well, where have you been? ;-) It’s a project where we’re asking for money from patrons, in exchange for a copy of the book (plus some other goodies, of course). It’s where we’re asking a pledge from you, to allow us to finalize the interior of the book, print it, and file a copyright. That’s what all the money is going toward. 

Here's how it works:

Click Here to go over to our Kickstarter Campaign, where the crowdfund for Cayau is now available.

Pick your tier, and go ahead and pledge. You won't be charged unless we meet our goal.

Once we’ve reached our goal, Kickstarter will collect payment from you, and we’ll get the ball rolling. We’ll finalize the interior of the book and send it to our printer. We’ll file for a copyright once those copies are printed. And then, once we have the copies in our warehouse, we’ll start shipping them out—to everyone who helped crowdfund.

I’ll also be throwing in some goodies, with every crowdfund order of Cayau – and yes, these will be personal gifts, from me. They might be stickers I’ve designed or candy I like. They might be jewelry I’ve made (more on that, next week!) or one of my favorite pens. I have all sorts of ideas! But the tier you pledge will determine how many gifts you get – and I’ll have a video up on my YouTube channel this Friday, with more information about the pledge tiers!

Ready to pledge? Click Here! 

If you want to hear me actually talk about this, look me up on YouTube! I'm at Art of Divine, and I've got a video all about it.

Any questions? Leave a comment or send me a message! I’m ready and waiting to tell you everything I can. Promise.

[love]

{Rani Divine}

Time for Change: The end of RAD Writing

Hi guys, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you stopped by. This month, what with it being a season of change for literally everyone, I wanted to take a few weeks to tell you about all the changes coming for me, both personally and professionally.

First thing’s first:

RAD Writing is closing its doors.

I’m sure that’s as much a shock to you as it was to me, when I found out. And I’m also sure that by now, some of you have already heard this news. But RAD is trying to make their closing as quiet and dignified as possible, so aside from some major sales online, you probably won’t see much from them, on the subject.

The fact of the matter is, the company is coming to a close, and is currently in the process of terminating the publishing contracts of all their active authors.

Including me.

So, by the end of the year, I’ll no longer be a published author with RAD Writing. In fact, I don’t know that I’ll be a published author at all.

That’s probably been the thing that’s taken the longest for me to come to terms with. But I’ve known about this for over a month now, I’ve known this was happening, and I have had time to come to terms with it. I’ve had time to prepare, to come up with a plan for my future, and to apply for new positions. And then the quarantining happened. So all of those plans are currently on hold. I’m still plugging away on those plans, in any way I can, but with so many industries completely shut down… it’s hard.

In any case, I wanted you all to know exactly what’s going on.

If you’ve been to RAD Writing’s website in the past couple weeks, you’ll have noticed some changes. The submissions pages are no longer accessible, the blog and podcasts are gone, and everything is, well, different. And it’s going to stay that way.

What you should know, for now, is that if you do want copies of my books and haven’t yet had the time or money to go purchase them, this is your final chance. The copies still in stock at RAD Writing are the copies that I couldn’t purchase myself, copies that I couldn’t afford to buy from the publisher. And they’re on sale, at cost, until stock runs out. 

So if you haven’t gotten them yet, now’s your chance.

And you have no idea how strange that is to say. My books won’t be on the market much longer, at least for now. And no, I can’t say honestly that I know what the future holds, but I can promise you that I won’t stop writing, and that I will explore publishing options for the future. I’d prefer a traditional publisher, you know. And I’m sure I’ll find one.

I’ll also keep you posted, every step of the way.

Lastly, I just want to say thank you. Thank you, to all of you who’ve supported me over the years. Thank you, for being a part of my writing journey. And thank you, for staying with me as the journey continues—in a way I don’t think any of us expected.

[love]

{Rani Divine}

Seat of Your Pants: The restart

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m glad you stopped by. This month, as you’ll well know by now, we’re talking about writing by the seat of your pants—and how that even works, to begin with. It’s something I’m often asked, if I’m honest, probably because there are a lot of people out there who think there’s only one way to write, and that’s to outline. Well, those people are wrong, and I’m here to tell you all about the way I write—by the seat of my pants.

By now, we’ve gotten a fair way into our stories. So if you haven’t been checking into the blog as often as you should, be sure to click back and check out the rest of the series!

Today?

Seat of Your Pants: The restart

I questioned whether or not I should include this part, in the series. It was questionable, because it doesn’t always happen. Sure, it will inevitably happen to everyone who writes this way, as it will probably happen to everyone who outlines, but it doesn’t have to happen, and it definitely doesn’t happen every time.

But because it does happen, it’s something that I thought you should know about, too.

If you’re a seat of your pants writer, then I’m sure you already know: we start over. When things just aren’t going right, when the story is crumbling in all the wrong directions and nothing seems to be going the way we meant, when we lose the connection we once had with the story, when there’s just no spark in it anymore, nothing to keep us linked to it like we once were… we start over.

Sometimes we restart the same story, other times we start on something altogether new. It varies, from case to case, and changes depending on the reason why we’re restarting, but if you’re wanting to try writing by the seat of your pants, then you should know. At some point, you will have to restart a story. And it’s okay, when you do.

See, the thing that you have to understand, is that writers who write like a deer in the headlights, who write by the seat of their pants, are incredibly accustomed to what you might think of as failure. Only, we don’t think of it that way. If we had to start over, it doesn’t mean we failed. It just means we probably didn’t go about writing the story the way we were supposed to. We’ll try again, and hopefully we’ll get it right that time.

And sure, it can be frustrating at times. Sometimes we struggle with it, a lot, but it always comes down to that: the story has to be written the right way, or else it just won’t work out, and we’ll have to start over again.

Eventually, you get better at spotting the times when you’ll have to start over, from earlier on in the writing process. Trust me. You will.

[love]

{Rani Divine}