Interviews shall resume next week (and I still need more, so please keep sending those interview requests!).
Today I have an exciting announcement about an upcoming appearance.
Yours truly is going to be in Artist Alley at Ace Comic Con with my series The Shape Shifter Chronicles! I’m super excited about this show because it’s freaking massive. I love meeting readers and fellow aces at these shows. And I’m also going to be table neighbors with a fellow ace artist, who was actually featured on this site a while back (Hallopino: Tumblr & WordPress).
Here’s the message that was sent with this shiny social media badge: “I am thrilled to announce I will be appearing at @acecomiccon Midwest at Chicago’s Navy Pier October 12-14th alongside Tom Hiddleston, Josh Brolin, & many more for an amazing weekend! Want to join us? Get your tix here: http://ow.ly/uqjO30l7DOf #acecomiccon”
It’s going to be a great show.
If you’re planning on attending, please drop by Artist Alley and say hi!
Thanks, everybody!
ADDENDUM: Ace Comic Con has nothing to do with asexuality. Rather that’s more a hilarious coincidence :-p
April was an incredibly rough month for me and it just seemed to drag on. It was one of those months where almost everything went wrong and I was just miserable (I’m still having difficulty wrapping my head around my late friend’s passing). There was a bright spot though: I was able to collaborate with Britty Lea again to make another book trailer, this one for the 2nd book in my series.
The trailer for Through Storm and Night debuted yesterday:
I love the spookiness and I’m just super happy with how it came out (and one of my dear, dear friends, Robyn Byrd, did some of the voice over).
Britty and I have already scheduled a brainstorming session to plan the trailer for From the Ashes. I’m looking forward to that.
I know some authors follow this site. If you’re looking for a badass ace filmmaker to make a super cool trailer for your book, I really recommend Britty. She’s fantastic. If you’re interested in commissioning Britty, check out her personal site (https://www.brittylea.com/) or her Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/brittyleafilm/).
And, of course, if you’re interested in helping out an indie ace author, you can always pick up a copy of my books. More information can be found at my personal website (https://laurenjankowski.com/) or my publisher’s, Snowy Wings Publishing, site (https://www.snowywingspublishing.com/).
I just wanted to share this because I’m super proud of it and I really appreciate the kindness of the artists and followers this site has. You all are amazing 🙂
As you all know, I’ll be speaking on a panel at C2E2 this weekend (more information found here and here). To celebrate, I’ve decided to have an eBook sale on the first two books of my series.
If you’re a fan of fantasy starring strong queer women (including adoptees, written by an adoptee) or you know anyone who is, please check out my books. And consider leaving a review. Being an indie author, I’m relying heavily on word of mouth and signal boosts 🙂
Here’s some more information on the books:
Sere from the Green
There is a race that lives among humans, unbeknownst to them, called shape shifters, those that can shift from human to animal at will. Many protect the innocent on Earth and act as the eyes and ears of the guardians, divine beings similar to gods in ancient myths.
Isis is a woman who lives a normal life until the day she photographs a murder scene for her job. When the body disappears from her photographs, Isis is determined to solve the mystery. Her investigation uncovers answers about her own past and sets her on a journey that will change her life forever.
The Meadows is home to the guardians, a race of beings similar to the deities in ancient mythology. They watch over the Earth from their serene lands, keeping everything in check. For millennia, it has been peaceful. However, in the beginning, there was a great war. A war with Chaos, a war that is still remembered in the legends of the guardians and shape shifters.
Months have passed since Isis’, a shape shifter/guardian hybrid and member of the prophesied Four, narrow escape from the Obsidian Manor. The Four still haven’t found answers about the mysterious Coop and their search for the Key has yielded nothing but more questions. When an old alliance is reforged, the Four are thrown into another mystery. Who are the strange shape shifters known only as the “glowing-eyes” and what is their connection to the odd symbol and vanishing bodies?
I have a super awesome book trailer and an announcement concerning the eBooks of my series.
BOOK TRAILER
A while back, I interviewed a fantastic up and coming filmmaker for this site, Britty Lea. I was struck by her creativity and just the fascinating visuals in her short films. I remained in touch with her (she even moderated this blog for a bit). Recently, she started doing some freelancing and mentioned wanting to get into book trailers. I can’t even begin to describe my excitement at hearing this and soon commissioned her.
Like numerous indie authors, I was selling the eBooks of my series through a site called Pronoun (which was part of MacMillan Publishing). MacMillan, without any sort of warning, decided to shut down Pronoun permanently. Thereby screwing numerous indies.
A week into marketing and I lost my rankings, which are important to indie authors, because of this. I’ve been forced to move my eBooks onto Kindle. For the foreseeable future, they’ll only be available on Kindle (I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience). The paperback distribution will be unaffected and still widely available.
However, this is a setback and a really frustrating one. People, I really, really need support in the form of reviews and signal boosts. And, of course, I need people to buy my books.
If you’re interested in physical copies, after Sunday, they’ll be available on my Square Store for convention prices (which are a little cheaper than online distributors and the money goes directly to me).
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).
Blitz’s personalized symbol
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.
Asexual Artists 