New Ads

 Originally posted on August 15, 2020 at https://ailovestogrow.wixsite.com/mysite/post/new-ads

Under no circumstances do I recommend working with Amazon's advertising division if you want to retain your sanity. After a month and a half of...revisions? More like "you can't use the word spoon in this ad." Only they don't tell you you can't use the word spoon, they just reject it so you have to try again. Then you get it up and some offended tool cancels it even though you had started to pay money...I'm wondering if it would be worth it to file a complaint with the FCC and see if they'll take my ad then!

I shouldn't make empty threats, though. Keeping my anonymity is tantamount to my emotional well-being. But I don't have to like it!

Anyway, people should start seeing CENSORED pop up in their kindle app with Diane's blacked assets front and center. With the money I've been getting for my overtime, I budgeted a significant chunk of change to get this advert moving and I hope it pays off in the next few months.

I have been spending too much time on forums. Yes, I justify it as exposure advertising, but really I've been piddling. Still finished Ch24, 3000ish words, AND work really has been a grind with 70+ hours this week. I'm surprised I got any sleep between work, writing, forum-ing, playing some vidjama games, playing with myself all while getting back to my gym that FINALLY opened again so I can limit my Expanding Frontier to within the boundaries of my jeans.

I can either eat ice cream or kill my co-workers. Going to the gym saves lives.

The last few chapters have been tense and emotionally draining. Drama, some angst, wondering if Honoka is going to snap and kill someone, the Evil Society Of Evil making their move and Honoka teetering on the edge of doing something unforgivable, it is a roller coaster. Ch25 is just some good ol' fun, back to basics, get to see a few characters from the beginning of Book 1 again and ending it all with some wholesome expandy sex. The rest of the main story is a non-stop Harmony session until Ch30 when we start up the climax and the family gets to show off all those points. Then I send it to Editor-kun while I re-read a certain collection of old children's books and write the dream sequence. Then it is 3-4 more draft touchups, working with Editor-kun closely where he cuts up my baby and I cry. Only then do I get to work on making the Status graphics, because those things are a pain to fix and Editor-kun helps, which costs me money so I try to do as much of it as I can. Editor-kun then finishes the cover and formats the book for final submission.

I know I have wanted to get everything done by the end of the year, and while that is still techically possible, I'm no longer supremely confident. I'm not the only client that works with Editor-kun and his time table could push the release date further out. I want to push myself, but I also want to keep eating and my job is both time-intensive and stressful. Sometimes it just gets to be so much that I arrive at my writing time and I stare at the screen for hours. I'm not blocked so much as I'm tired and worried if I'll have a job tomorrow. How am I supposed to write smut when mayors are shutting down businesses on a whim and mine could be next?

I think part of my recent slow down has been trying to get through all these chapters with the drama. It started around 19 and just kept going. My own fault, I wanted this all in here, but it kept going. I'm probably going to go through it all soon and either cut out a lot of it to tighten up the drama or add in some fart jokes to keep the levity up.

Interestingly enough, I recently had a written conversation on the Process forums about why I write the way I do. Erotica is on average 10k-15k words and if it is a part of the Process genres (BE, FMG, GTS, TF, TG, Futa, etc) it is usually even less. Book 1 is 198k words and so far I'm 185k words into Book 2. I'm not going to say I have the longest-running smut series, Tefler is far and away ahead of me there. And because his stuff has a lot of...I think bimbo transformation would be the closest, though I remember one clear scene with BE and a few other TF, I can't even say I have the longest Process series. But for a story starring a futa girl I'm pretty sure I'm in the lead by a LOT and when Book 2 comes out, I'll be the undisputed futa queen. Also, with all the Processes I have in BM, I think I even have Tefler beat out for sheer quantity in that department.

What I'm getting at is when people write a short erotic or process story, they focus on one or two scenes and then publish, rightfully knowing there are girls like me who will buy table scraps because that's all the smutty food available. This has become so normalized in the industry that we EXPECT our smut to be smaller than this blog post. The problem is then authors forget that we also need to bond with characters before we can be fully satiated.

This is one of the reasons I like the Kate Daniel series by Ilona Andrews.

((Forewarning, the first book in the series isn't very good. What I mean is, there is a part near the end where Kate is pushed to do something stupid by the male lead, she does it, then when it fails, Curran blames Kate and KATE ACCEPTS IT IS HER FAULT!! URRGH!! That entire part breaks the book for me and I just move on to the next one, which gets better))

Kate is awesome, kicks butt and takes names, slings magic with the best of them and while it is clear she isn't some simpering sissy who needs a man or an overbearing woman who needs to denigrate men, Curran puts up with her crap just like she puts up with his. The two are a matched pair and it takes three books of building sexual tension before we get to the actual smut. The only way this series could have been better was if Kate was the were-lion and Curran...well, he can be a shifter too. Fortunately, there are plenty of spin-offs involving the various wonderful supporting cast to itch that TF kink. Dali is my favorite, she turns into a tiger.

The reason the books are so hot and heavy is because the authors give us readers enough time to get to know the characters so when the smut happens, we are riveted. Just because smut has smut doesn't exclude it from needing all the things people require to enjoy a story: plot, good world world-building, interesting prose (or at least legible prose) and characters the reader can engage with. None of that happens without the author putting in the work.

So if you are wondering why I don't write erotica just like everyone else, there you have it. I want you to get to know Honoka and the wives just like I know them, and a couple of scenes isn't going to be enough for you to see them as people instead of cutouts.

Mad props to M Rutlin for your review! Gotta say, I hope I am through this mess now as well. If I had to do it all over again, I would have written all 3 books first and then dealt with publishing them later and dealing with all the advertising drama later. Self-publishing is way, way too much work to do on the side, it is a full-time job. If only I made enough money writing that I could quit my IRL job, this would all be so much easier. Not there yet, though. Sigh. Also a shoutout to Joshua Sloane from GoodReads for your stars!

Going to call it a day right now. Here's to hoping the world regains sanity soon and realizes a disease isn't worth killing an economy over. If a person gets sick, they can recover from that, there are proven treatments that are affordable even without insurance. How are they supposed to recover if they can't feed their family?

Keep harmonizing!

#ailovestogrow #marketingsucks #chuggingalong #katekicksbutt

PS: a reminder for everyone that's new, look for my username (ailovestogrow) on GoodReads, PornHub, YouTube and newly active at http://www.process-productions.com/forum/index.php . I talk about smut, promote my book, provide you with audioporn from chapters of Book 1, lots of good stuff. Every like, comment and especially review goes a long way to building up my joy glands and lets me step just a little closer towards the day when I can do this full time. And I know it is a pain to register for this blog, but that's so I can write whatever I want here and not get arrested for making smut accessible to minors. It is really easy to register and then you can ask questions to me directly from this very page!