Hello all!
Hopefully you will forgive some self-promotion. I can’t interview myself, so hopefully you won’t mind a small personal signal boost.
I recently found out the largest convention I attend (C2E2 in Chicago) is taking place a month earlier next year. I also want to attend a convention in New York with a fellow ace author. In order to do that and bring more attention to asexual artists, I need to raise some extra funds. I’m an indie author, which means I do all my own marketing on top of writing. Lately, I’ve been dedicating most of my time to Asexual Artists, which I dearly love. There aren’t enough sites out there dedicated to artists on the asexual spectrum.
Anyhow, I’ve kind of been neglecting my marketing work at a time when I really shouldn’t. I need to move more books so I can do more for asexual artists (and eat on occasion, which is apparently important).
My series is a fantasy series that revolves around a number of strong badass women. It’s about a woman named Isis who stumbles on an ancient mystery when she photographs a murder scene and the next day, all evidence of the murder has disappeared, including the body from her pictures. Isis, being the determined individual she is, can‘t let this go so she starts investigating. In the course of her investigation, Isis discovers she’s not human like she originally thought. She’s part shape shifter and part guardian (guardians are similar to ancient gods in assorted mythologies. I’m a massive myth-nerd).
The series is four women kicking ass, trying to solve this mystery and stop whoever or whatever is behind it. There are four novels in the series so far (Sere from the Green, Through Storm and Night, From the Ashes, and Haunted by the Keres). The fifth installment should be out next year.
There are a number of asexual characters in the series: Isis is Gray-A and Alex is aromantic-asexual. Later on, there’s an entire group of characters that fall somewhere on the asexual spectrum. I originally thought Blitz was demi, but the more I think about it, the more she seems to be aromantic. Diversity is an important part of the series and I’ve done my best to make the characters as diverse as possible.*
*”Sere from the Green,” the first novel in the series is a bit difficult to get through on account of I was working with an incredibly ace-phobic writing mentor at the time and was more concerned with pleasing him (which was impossible because again, extremely ace-phobic) than actually finding my voice. This resulted in a manuscript that’s riddled with errors and problematic wording/language, on top of the numerous mistakes first-time writers tend to make. However, once you get through it, most readers agree that my next novels seem to be where I found my own voice. They’re more polished and the emotions are dialed down about a thousand percent.
Anyhow, you can find me on Amazon, Smashwords, and Square (I can personalize books if you order through Square). There are chapter-by-chapter commentaries on the first three novels on my personal website (http://laurenjankowski.com/).
Things that would really help: buying books, any and all signal boosts (dear god, signal boosting is awesome), leaving reviews, recommending my series to friends and family. Because most literary publications don’t bother with indie authors, we rely heavily on word of mouth.
Thank you, wonderful followers 🙂
Asexual Artists 