Lance here. I needed to give my characters a break this time and write the update myself.
Updates on Butchery and Metadata
Last time, we reported on changes to A Perfect Blindness’s metadata, the A+ material, keywords, and description. If you don’t know what A+ material is, it’s that stuff that appears below a title on Amazon in the “From the Publisher” section. It’s relatively new for indie writers like me, so I gave it a whirl:
From the Publisher
Three characters, each telling their version of Mercurial Visions’ rise
Jennifer, when she realizes she doesn’t know the woman who was once her best friend
Amy’s request, which Jonathan
Scott talking about Jonathan
a peek at some of the flavors
Let me know what you think about those. Like them? Like one? Any make you scratch your head, wondering “huh?”
The updatedDescription
We were so young that summer of 1988 and desperately wanted to make something of ourselves. Have our music heard. Enough to abandon everything for Chicago and start new lives. But not enough for anyone to die.
As each of us looks back, we tell our part in the creation of our band, Mercurial Visions. Along the way, we expose the flaws that made what happened inevitable.
I’d mistaken what Amy had meant when she asked me to turn her, to turn our passion into a song—she’d wanted eternity. I only needed a muse.
Scott refused to admit to himself what had happened to his friend Sammy the year before we met.
Jennifer failed to see how she’d begun mistaking her real life for the fictional ones in advertising and films.
How could we possibly have understood what each other needed when we couldn’t even see what we needed ourselves? Caught up in such a toxic mix, it’s no wonder someone ended up dead. “simply glorious” —Redheaded Book Lover “I couldn’t put it down. Such a beautiful way with words!” Amazon reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “With each sentence and each page, he draws us deeper into the unknown until we are so immersed, we are lost to our own reality,” Amazon reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “This story of young people passionate and striving to achieve their artistic goals no matter what – encountering love as well as plenty of twists and turns along the way,” Amazon reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
What do you think?
Even if it isn’t your particular flavor of literature, does it sound intriguing? Does anything stand out as being off? Or straight up wrong?
Ads with Likes
What are the effects of these changes? A bump in sales and Kindle Unlimited reads. It’s still early, as these changes are new-ish and are still percolating through the Amazon ecosystem and out into Meta and wherever people talk about books.
I did find out, though, that Ads can get liked. Really. I never once thought to give a thumbs up to an ad, but it has happened:
A different version got likes, too. Not a ton, but it’s a start. And this is an Advertisement. Not a standard post. I find that wild.
Magazines and Contests
In need of seeing something new in motion, I have sent two different short stories to two different contests. I plucked what amounted to an origin story from the pages of Walking the Darkmaker’s Way, refashioned it to work as a standalone piece, and sent it to the Writer’s Digest Awards. I’ll hear back on that by October.
A second short, a new urban fantasy idea, I sent to the Dream Foundry’s contest, one established by L. Ron Hubbard. As a science fiction writer, before he was a cult founder. That I will hear back on in August.
The third short story is a scene from A Perfect Blindness that does well on its own. That is at an online magazine, Mixtape, which publishes stories with a soundtrack. I’ll find out if it gets accepted in July.
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