Re-Publishing Your Novel by Kristen Brand

Personally, as an Indie author, I’ve always been curious about the process of re-publishing a novel.  I enjoy the creative freedom of self-publishing way too much to ever go for traditional publishing the first round, but what if a publishing company finds my finished work and wants to add it to their shelves?  Well, that very thing happened to Kristen Brand, author of The White Knight & Black Valentine Series.  She was able to re-sell her Steampunk novels, The Ghost Machine and Clockmaker, to Silver Empire publishing, and since she’s my sister, I took advantage and decided her to ask some questions that I’m sure we’re all wondering.

  1. Was your process overall positive or negative?

It’s still in the early days, but everything’s very positive so far! To give a little background, my first experience with this publisher was when I submitted my short story, The Strange Stairs at the Aldebourne Estate, to their Secret Stairs anthology.

The anthology is a collection of stories about the urban legend of mysterious staircases leading to nowhere found in the middle of the woods. I thought the idea was fascinating, and it inspired me to write a short story starring Ella Rosenfeld, the spirit medium protagonist of my steampunk novel, The Ghost Machine. The story was accepted, and Secret Stairs went on to be a smash success and bestseller in the horror genre.

Later, the publisher reached out to me about republishing some or all of my self-published novels. I wasn’t ready to part with all my novels, since I didn’t want all my eggs in one basket, so to speak, and I do like the independence of being a self-published author. But it seemed like a perfect fit for my two steampunk novels, since the publisher had already published a short story from that world and has a catalog of other steampunk books.

2. Did you make any revisions to the text before re-publishing?

Nope! There were no changes to the actual content of the book, only the packaging.

3. Talk about your new cover.

I think it does a great job getting across that this is a steampunk novel with an eerie atmosphere. The dark, decrepit hallway is perfectly creepy and straight out of Auttenberg Asylum from the story. Plus, I love the gear design behind the title.

While part of me wants the girl on the cover to exactly match every single minute detail of how I described the character and her wardrobe on the pages, the purpose of a book cover is to sell books, and this cover is doing just that—and doing it stylishly!

4. How involved were you in any changes made?

Since the changes were all on the book formatting and publishing side rather than editorial, I wasn’t involved much. Which frees me up to write more, so no complaints here.

5. How did the marketing and promotion differ from the first go-around?

It was much better planned, ha! Like a lot of authors, I kind of stumble around in the dark when it comes to marketing. I spent a lot of time contacting book bloggers after I first published The Ghost Machine, only to have a small fraction respond.

My publisher ran a successful Kickstarter to fund the book’s relaunch, getting publicity before it was even out. They grew my followers on Bookbub and put out advanced review copies on Booksrpout. I’ve definitely learned a lot from watching their process.

When I first published the book on my own, I didn’t really try to market it until after it was released. Now, I realize how important it is to plan ahead and put things in motion months in advance. I’m definitely going to put these lessons into practice for my future releases.

 

The Ghost Machine: Buy Today!

So I’m having a mega-proud sister moment because my sister’s phenomenal steampunk novel, The Ghost Machine, is relaunching with Silver Empire Publishing!  If you already have it as an e-book, guess what!  It’ll also soon be available in both paperback and hardback – the gift that just keeps giving.

BUY THE E-BOOK ON AMAZON TODAY HERE!

Follow me on twitter at @JE_Brand for more updates! Still not enough?  Follow the author herself at @brandedkristen and see more of her upcoming projects on her website.

~*~

Ella Rosenfeld doesn’t feel insane.

In fact, she feels quite normal. Exactly how she did before the accident.

Until the sun goes down. Then the hallucinations start…and the ghosts come. Sometimes they speak to her. Sometimes they merely stare. But they couldn’t possibly be real, could they?

Checking herself into an asylum in the mountains of Eastern Europe, Ella hopes the doctor there can cure her. She doesn’t want to be a burden to her family. She doesn’t want to keep seeing ghosts, or whatever they are, every night. Desperate for relief, she’ll try anything to banish the dead.

But there is no solace to be found. Only silence, knitting, and cruelty. Soon Ella realizes that while she could check herself into the asylum, she cannot check herself out. At the mercy of the doctor, her treatments grow more barbarous and agonizing by the day.

Ella must escape before the horrific experiments leave her dead. Or completely mad. But her only hope is the surly and stubborn Baron. Only he can stand between her and the twisted treatments her Doctor insists are necessary.

Will the Baron help Ella or betray her? And what terrible fate is waiting for Ella beneath the asylum?

Kristen Brand’s The Ghost Machine is a haunting page-turner, powered every step of the way by Ella’s determination and intelligence. Fans of plucky, resourceful heroines, ghastly ghosts, and abominable clockwork machines will adore this book.

Check into Auttenburg Asylum and read The Ghost Machine today!

 

Chapter 23: How to Create the Best Romantic Subplot

I want you to sit and be honest with yourself.  Whether a novel or a TV show, how important are the romantic subplots?  Personally when rereading or skimming back through a book I’ve already read, I find myself stopping at the scenes where the romantic interests finally kiss or some other big step in their relationship.  In shows like The 100, I know my best friend is invested in it purely to see Bellamy and Clarke finally get it on.  A romantic subplot can make or break your story, and you have to make sure that your readers are rooting for them to get together, not wondering why the two are even a thing.

The first question you have to answer is what trope you want the love interest (LI) to fall under in regards to your protagonist (MC) (or other character, if neither of the romantic parties are the main focus of the novel).  Do you want them to be ‘opposites attract’ in regards to one another?  ‘Tall, dark, and mysterious’?  ‘From friend zone to end zone’?  ‘Thin line between hate and love’?

Everyone has their preference, but quite honestly you can pick any as long as you do it right.  I’m going to go into more detail of each trope, but the first message I want to get across is the dos and don’ts in a more general setting.

Be careful not to make the romantic subplot line completely separate from the main plot.  Every scene in your book should be plot-driven, and your characters developing romantic feelings for one another shouldn’t push the brakes on what’s going on.  A good example of this is in The Agency series by Y.S. Lee.  Mary (MC) and James (LI) have different goals that lead them on the same path.  They’re constantly at conflict with one another, and eventually learn that it’s better to work together than getting in each other’s way.  This mutual respect mixed with attraction leads to the two’s eventual relationship.  It’s a slow and steady progression that doesn’t finally come together until several books in, but it’s the perfect example of the “OH COME ON JUST KISS HER” that keeps the readers wanting more.

My second piece of advice is to not lose one character into the other.  Unless it’s intentional and you want a character to come off as a weakling who’s entire being is dependent of the love interest, make sure that you keep clean separations in one from the other.  The best example of this going wrong is Twilight.  Bella had no personal interests, hobbies, anything that distinguished her.  She was shy and clumsy, but that’s as far as her dimensions went. This is brought to light even more in New Moon.  When he’s not there she become a non-functioning, suicidal human.  The book literally skips months and months because her story simply isn’t worth telling without him in it.  While it’s true that romance is a heavy, heavy theme in Twilight, so Meyer might’ve only wanted to focus on the two as a couple, it can also be said that there’s nothing she could’ve potentially written about to keep the readers hooked without Edward there.

Okay, so let’s delve into ‘opposites attract’.  The example I’m going to give for this is my very own Ethlynn and Nash from The Freedom Game. Ethlynn comes from a background of slavery, never speaks her mind out of fear, and almost always takes the time to think before she speaks.  Nash, on the other hand, was born into one of the most powerful families in the kingdom, makes sure everyone and everyone knows his opinion and expects them to take it as fact, and often has to backtrack to stay in the clear because his tongue is so much quicker than his mind.  The two make for an explosive combination.  For Ethlynn, Nash represents the very people who’ve kept her people so oppressed; for Nash, Ethlynn is supposed to be property more than human and to lose to her is to lose all respect from his fellow nobles.  They have the same goal: to gain Professor Maithe’s apprenticeship.  This causes their paths to intertwine and put them face to face more than either would like.  The more time they spend together, though, the more they can’t help but humanize one another.  With an ‘opposites attract’ dynamic, don’t be afraid of confrontation.  It’s what makes this trope so fun to read.  To keep the progression realistic, keep it slow.  Arguments that turn to debates that turn into challenging one another to look at a different perspective.  Give them at least some common morals or interests.  In order to make this combination work, they have to have a firm foundation that makes the other stuff just prat of the fun.

Tall, dark, and mysterious.  For this trope, I’m going to refer to my sister’s book: Clockmaker: A Gothic Steampunk Novel.  Lesauvage (LI) comes to Melek (MC) in need of help to transport a mysterious crate.  She doesn’t trust him and thinks him eccentric despite being attracted to him.  For this dynamic, the key is to be careful in building trust.  Often the ‘tall, dark, and mysterious’ character has trust issues because of their past, and the opposite doesn’t trust them purely based on how mysterious they are.  This makes sense.  Don’t just magically have them trust one another ‘just because’.  If they develop trust quickly, give reason to it.  Don’t make either character go against who they are just because of the other’s ‘dreamy eyes’ or other nonsense.  I’m not saying don’t have the characters get along.  They can be the exact same character type except we know more about one than the other.  Their similarities and differences are completely up to you.  Make it a journey to find more about the mysterious person.  Leave the reader wanting to know more.  Maybe some things happen where you have to question their integrity.  But when it comes to why you start to trust them, give concrete scenes and scenarios that give you a better understanding of why that person is the way they are.

From friend zone to end zone.  As the ever basic Harry Potter nerd, I have to refer to Hermione and Ron in this example.  In particular, I’d like to call out Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as the crucial turning point in their relationship.  Up until that point there had been some serious hinting at the two eventually becoming an item, but this was the first time that their feelings (and jealousies) were actually vocalized, unless you count Ron being jealous of Hermione doodling little hearts in Lockhart’s lessons.  It’s important with this trope to not skip the friendship phase.  Show why they’re friends. Despite their differences, from the first book we saw that Hermione and Ron would support each other.  Just look to this quote from Sorcerer’s Stone:

“Yes – of course – but there’s no wood!” Hermione cried, wringing her hands.

“HAVE YOU GONE MAD?” Ron bellowed.  “ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT?”

“Oh, right!”

It shows that even if he’s going to do it without directly complimenting her, Ron is going to believe in Hermione and push her to realize what she’s capable of.

Then, there’s the time in Prisoner of Azkaban where Ron stands up for her faults like when Snape deducts points from Gryffindor for “being an insufferable know-it-all”.  Book-Hermione is much more brash and gives off more of a stuck-up vibe than Movie-Hermione (which only makes her more three dimensional, not any less lovable).  Still, Ron stands up for her saying that Snape couldn’t ask the question if he doesn’t want to be told.  I could go on and on of more examples of the two’s developing friendship, but let your readers appreciate their friendship while desperately wanting them to get together before you finally give it to them.  This trop is especially tricky because it’s so common in real life.

Thin line between hate and love.  For this example I’m going to have to call out my favorite couple from the classic Pride & Prejudice: Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy.  As soon as they meet, Darcy insults Lizzie in front of all of her friends.  Just look at this quote from Elizabeth, “There are few people who I really love, and still fewer whom I think well.  The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it…”  Both of them are hard to please and have very different views from one another.  Darcy went so far as to propose, thinking that she wanted it, when she still hated him.  The two are hardly ever on the same page, and even when they are they don’t understand one another’s actions.  It isn’t until the letter where Darcy explains his thinking that Elizabeth begins to change her perception of him.  Sure, there are moments of attraction between the two before then, but Lizzie is so tight in her ways that she wouldn’t act on them when she believes herself to be so morally repulsed by him.  And, that is the key.  The only way to properly shift a ‘love to hate’ relationship to ‘hate to love’ is through experience.  Write scenes that characterize them to one another.  Give them no chance but to understand one another, even when they don’t agree.  Focus on their differences in the beginning and give way to their similarities when you need progression.  Elizabeth was not what Darcy expected from a wife, nor he what she expected out of a husband.  They learned to love one another, and that’s the biggest win to make this trope work.

Before I end this, I want to reiterate that all of these tropes should be written during plot-driven scenes.  First think of the MC and LI’s goals in the book, and figure out how they’re going to overlap one another.  Make them fall in love during the wild, crazy adventure that is your main plot, not off to the side doing whatever they want to lose your reader’s interest.  Doing this correctly can make your readers overly committed to finding out how the two’s love story ends, and doing it wrong can make the reader irritated enough to put the book back on the shelf.  Choose your trope wisely, and take the time to write it well!

Clockmaker by Kristen Brand

The crew of the airship Sultana are nearly destitute. No one knows this better than their captain, Melek, who’s almost desperate enough to sell her treasured family heirlooms to pay her crew’s wages. Then a reclusive gentleman wearing a strange golden mask offers a fortune to transport him and a mysterious cargo to Istanbul. Needing the money, Melek can’t bring herself to refuse, even when her instincts warn of trouble.

Now strange noises haunt her airship at night, and deadly warships stalk the Sultana through dark, stormy skies. Melek’s masked passenger refuses to explain his private affairs, and she enjoys arguing with him perhaps a little too much. But he’s even more dangerous than she suspected, and she’ll have to unravel the dark intrigue he’s brought aboard her ship before it kills everyone on board.

 

So I have to say, this is by far my favorite of my sister’s books so far.  Captain Melek was already my favorite minor character from The Ghost Machine and I thought “there’s no way Kristen could possibly make her any more bad ass.. I mean come on.  She’s already my steampunk hero” but NO.  Somehow I love her even more!  And you’re in luck; it’s finally available for purchase!

CLICK HERE TO BUY!!

 

Steampunk Newbie

I don’t know if any of you decided to buy Ghost Machine by my sister (link in first post!) but it’s gotten me in the mood to read steampunk.  I’m completely new to this genre, so I was curious if anyone had any recommendations?