M. Pax: Top Five Highs and Lows of Publishing

Please welcome M Pax to my blog today. She is a truly amazing person with a lot of drive and talent. A great combo. Take it away, Mary.

This author gig is tough, rife with ups and downs. Here are the highlights of mine:

Top Lows

1. Rejections. I still submit short stories and still get rejections.
2. Bad reviews. Most of them are for my perma free The Backworlds. This used to really bother me. Lately, not so much. It sells my sequels. It does its job. And it’s a darn good story.
3. The Renaissance of Hetty Locklear not selling. That one is like pushing water up a hill.
4. Mistakes. I’ve hired editors I didn’t like and a cover artist I didn’t get along with. I’ve learned to get recommendations from writers I know and to get them privately. Just because a writer lists an artist or editor doesn’t mean she or he would use that vendor again. I’ve also learned to trust my gut and intuition.
5. Slow sales days. Husband Unit hates these, too. He has to listen to me whine about how it might all be over. Yeah, I can be a bit melodramatic.

Top Highs

1. Fan letters. There is nothing better than contact from a reader who says he or she loves my writing. It makes all the lows worthwhile. Every single one.
2. Dr. Joseph Geary being a fan of the Backworlds series. As the innovator of modern telescope optics, this is an uber geeky victory for me. One that made me squee. It also impressed my astronomy boyfriends.
3. Being contacted by a publisher this past summer with an offer to include Semper Audacia in an anthology. She paid me, too. Space Jockey is now out, selling very well, and gaining me exposure.
4. The Backworlds series selling steady and growing. Yay! The fans now help shape the stories. Originally, it was Lepsi’s skull found under the ash sea. I received a lot of letters telling me how much my readers loved Lepsi and Talos. So yeah, Lepsi is not dead. Not anymore.
5. Doing what I love – writing stories. It’s a real high when each one is finished and is sent out into the world.

M. Pax-- Inspiring the words she writes, she spends her summers as a star guide at Pine Mountain Observatory in stunning Central Oregon where she lives with the Husband Unit and two demanding cats. She writes science fiction and fantasy mostly. You can find out more by visiting her at:

Website / FB / Twitter / Goodreads / Pinterest / Wattpad

Beyond the Edge

 

Some truths are better left unfound.

For two years Craze’s dear friend, Lepsi, has been missing. The murmurings of a haunted spaceship might be a message and may mean his old pal isn’t dead. The possibility spurs Craze and Captain Talos to travel to uncharted worlds, searching. Out there, in an unfamiliar region of the galaxy beyond the Backworlds, they stumble upon a terrible truth.

Meanwhile, Rainly remains on Pardeep Station as acting planetlord, dealing with the discovery of her lover’s dark and brutal past. Alone and questioning her judgment, her introspection unlocks more than heartache. Latent protocols in her cybernetics activate, forcing her to face a sinister secret of her own.

In the far future, humanity settles the stars, bioengineering its descendents to survive in a harsh universe. This is the fourth book in the science fiction series, The Backworlds. A space opera adventure.

Amazon / AmazonUK / Nook / Smashwords / Kobo / Other Outlets

Photo: Please note, barring author pics, most of the photos on this blog were taken by me. However, this one of the girl rock climbing is not one of them. I don't think I could climb that high. Mary kindly provided this pic for the post.