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Hey Reader,

Happy New Year to you all! I hope it's new year. I'm ahead of many in terms of time zone, so it's almost night of January 1st here, but I'm also behind many, so I hope new year hasn't passed for you already.

It's the start of a new year, and I hope it's going to be better than 2024.

I hope this year brings you happiness, health, safety, and freedom from financial worries.

News and Updates

New Releases

​After the End released today. It's actually a prequel to the main series, but as the main series has only one book so far, you could say this is book 1. It contains two novellas that are standalones within the Lost Race world, and then we have the other standalone novel, Before the End, which is releasing on the 19th.

After the End is only $0.99, so don't forget to grab a copy!

The Lost Race was a book I had the inspiration for, way back in 2007. It was started after I lost my father, and was drifting, but then I had this idea and I started writing. It was a slow process even then.

I lost nearly all of my draft in a hard drive crash in 2009, and was very dispirited over it. I stopped writing altogether. However, later, I managed to write a small novel and publish it, but I was never fully happy with it.

So I unpublished it, and rewrote it in its entirety, which is the present Before the End.

The prologue chapter of the original book became The Arrival novella in After the End, and some of the deleted chapters in the original book became The Survival Novella in After the End.

At the moment, I have no further plans for this series, but I do have ideas, which I may write at some point.

Also, these days, I back up my writing to my dropbox, to one drive and to google drive because I don't want to lose my stuff again

WRITING

The end of last year was bad for me, overall. I got almost nothing done. But I'm planning to do some revisions this month. Blade Broken has got some amazing beta feedback and I'm going to be revising it as well as Shades of Spring and The Wizard.

BOOKS ON SALE

I've got only one book on sale this month. I want to talk about it more.

It's very gay!

​Heart of a Hero is a superhero book, and stemmed from a writing prompt where the villain approaches the hero at his spouse's funeral and says, "They were too good for this world".

The funeral scene is where the book starts, and I hope I've been able to do some justice to the prompt as well as the story that spawned from it! It's only at $0.99 for all of January.

OTHER NEWS

The series of blog posts about the Chinese and Korean shows I've watched is still going on.

More chapters of Blade Reforged has been updated in my site. The password is TFKFMS. Please don't share it!

It's queer fantasy with romance, a lot of feelings, political intrigue, and magic.

Don't forget I have a discord server. It's the best place to stay in touch with me. Don't expect much because me introvert no talkie to strangers.

Also, do check out my Ko-fi shop where I have all of my books. It has the same price as the other retailers, but I do get to keep 100% of my royalties.

I don't mean to brag, but I've a feeling that Blade Broken may well be the best thing I've written till date. The prequel, Blade of Castrial has so many amazing reviews over on Net Galley already. Neither of the books have enough pre-orders, but I hope the situation will change. Lucian and Alaric deserves a lot more than I can give.

Check out the reviews on Net Galley for Blade of Castrial. Sadly, it's no longer available in Net Galley since I purchased an one month feature with a co-op. There's no way for me to afford a net galley feature otherwise. But the book is available for pre-order at $0.99!

2024 Round up

This has been a year that has overall been bad for me, in terms of sales and personal life. But it did have its positive moments.

Loss: I lost two friends who were both extremely important to me, almost like siblings. It still hurts more than I can say.

Neutral: I've made $150 less in royalties than in 2023, but I also spent way less, so that's there.

Win: I had an awesome trip to England with my daughter and husband, and I got to attend day 1 of the Worldcon at Glasgow where I met some of my favourite authors.

Loss: My credit card debt is over the roof now, and I've absolutely no idea how I'm going to pay everything.

Neutral: I spent most of the year in burnout mode, so wasn't able to write much. But I managed to read 180 books. If you're interested, I've a list of books that I read in 2024 which were truly exceptional here.

Win: I finished the first draft of The Fallen Kingdom, wrote a few more fanfics, finished a short story, revised Blade Broken and all the betas loved this version, but there's still room for improvement.

Win: I got a new client for editing who loved my work.

Loss: I wasn't able to read anything after September, and am struggling even now to read.

Win: I made more friends in the writing and indie community, and I love interacting with them.

Win: I expanded my mailing list and moved from substack to Convertkit for my newsletter provider. I'm on a free plan, because I still can't afford a paid one. All the same, it's a move I'm happy with. After substack refused to take down posts by Nazis, I was not comfortable staying there. Getting rid of subscribers who doesn't open their mails or engage in any way also helped.

I need to do another culling soon. I will rely on Kit's stats, but I would also appreciate it if any of you who want to stay on in the list lets me know.

MORE ABOUT SALES

I have made a graph of my sales retailerwise for this year.

Amazon is still the major chunk of my sales, but Kobo has been catching up. In 2023, Kobo was way behind Apple and B&N, but this year, they're at second spot. Google too has started making inroads this year, overtaking B&N. I've also made one sale at my direct store, which I consider a great win.

My total gross income from royalties for the year comes to around $1128.49 which is not all that great. Expenses for the year comes to around $1639.21, so I'm in the red for the year. Considering I was 1000s of dollars in the red in 2023, I'm happy that the margin has shrunk. I'm hoping that in 2025, I'll be in the black.

I had 27 books which made a net profit in 2024, and the negative was due largely to a Bookbub New Releases for Less feature for Wizard's Debt which put me around $300 in the red during March.

The books that made a net profit in 2024 are under.

I'm happy to see that most of my series titles were at net profit last year without my doing much marketing. The only book for which I did some paid marketing was The Elitist Supremacy, which is not in the above graph, but it's only around a $0.97 in the red, so I think the marketing efforts at least nearly broke even.

This is how much I made on the average for one book retailer wise. Overdrive is leading the pack since library channels are always more lucrative for authors. But Print and B&N are close behind too. Hoopla is far behind because I've had only cost per checkout there. You can also see that per book, amazon pays less than most other retailers.

For all the wins, in a few years when I look back, I will remember 2024 as the year I lost Pella and Suresh, so to me, the losses do outweigh the wins by a long margin.

Author Spotlight

This month, we have a new Author of the Month! It's none other than the amazing Maya Darjani, a writer and photographer from the heartland of America who writes genre-bending fiction about badass women, dual loyalty, and the false promise of patriotism.

Maya is an author I know in person (by that I mean online), and I can confirm that she's awesome, and her books are worth reading!

You can find her books here! More details about her books here and my review of Ancient as the Stars here!​

Promotions

FREE BOOKS

Yes, that got your attention, didn't it? It's also a promo, but one where authors give you free books in exchange for you signing up for their newsletters!

It's a Fantasy and Sci Fi promo, and I hope y'all give it a look, because free books are awesome, and as you're well aware, you can unsubscribe from an author's mailing list any time, so if you find the contents not to your liking, there's always a simple solution! And you get to keep your books too! How awesome is that?

​Gelid Islands is permanently $0.99 and is a prequel to The Flame of the Dragon's Oath and deals with Evan's backstory a bit. But both the books can be read as standalones too.

Don't forget that I have an exclusive book only for y'all, and you can download it from Bookfunnel as well.

OTHER PROMOS

Yes, even in the new year, I have to promote since I must eat.

I have started a promo for fantasy that's not rooted in Europe. Because there's more to fantasy than Europe, and I wanted to showcase some of the other cultures out there!

As someone from India, I've always found myself enjoying books rooted in Asian cultures more. But this isn't just for Asia, it's for any fantasy that's not European. Do check out the Non European Fantasy Promo.

The non European promo has the Shadow's Creed series in it, which I really love. It's a Japanese inspired fantasy series with excellent world building and characters. It also has Soultaming the Serpent, another favourite of mine plus Bloodborn Dragon, which I loved.

You can see my review of Shadow's Hand, Phantom's Lament, Soultaming the Serpent, and The Blood Born Dragon on Goodreads. Soultaming the Serpent and The Blood Born Dragon are both queer, so that's an added attraction for me!

My books in the promo are Pradyutita, Durga, and The Deathless Ones.

​Pradyutita is the first book of the Jaya! series, which is now complete. It's a retelling of the Hindu epic, Mahabharata, stripped of gods and magic, making it a human story of flawed characters and their ambitions.

I have taken some liberties with the original text since the series was inspired by an interview by Bibek Debroy, who translated the critical edition of the Mahabharata into English. In that interview he had opined, an opinion he has reinstated in the preface to the CE, that Arjuna was not part of the original book, that he and the twins were later interpolations, that the original had only Yudhishtira and Bheema.

Let's just say that the idea of the series derived from that, and it ran away with me.

Pradyutita was an SPFBO semifinalist as well. You can read the review by the judge here. It was also featured in Before We Blog's South Asian and Indian Sub continental fantasy you should be reading post.​

Pradyutita was published in 2018, but it took me a long time to continue the series. It was encouragement from Mihir, the judge who put it through the semi finals, that helped me make the decision to finally sit down and write the rest of the books.

The series is now complete with Astamite having been released last November. It's a series that I loved to write, and I hope y'all enjoy it too!

​Durga, is also a book derived from Hindu mythology. It's a humanised story of the legend of Goddess Durga and her defeat of the demon, Mahisha. In my book, which is low fantasy, everyone is human, including Durga. It's a book that I really loved writing, and I hope you will love reading it as well. It's on sale at $0.99 till the 2nd of January as well.

​The Deathless Ones was inspired by a dream. There is a scene in the book where the elementals tell Madh who they are and he doesn't believe them. Well, that scene is from my dream. Everything else just came about. Syamin who is not there in the blurb, but is one of the important characters, still remains one of my favourites. And the cover! To date, it's one of my most favourite covers! It was made by my friend, Nola, who's an incredibly talented artist and writer.

There's a Sci Fi and Fantasy Promo and After the End is in it

There's also a Romantasy Promo where Memories of Forgotten Waves is featured.

​Memories of Forgotten Waves also started from a dream I had. I forgot the details, but I do remember that a wizard had enslaved some magical beings for reasons, and then set them free. Again, this one underwent many changes to get where it was now. It's a book that's close to my heart.

Kobo Plus

The month won't be complete without a Kobo Plus Promo. This time, it's Sci Fi Books on Kobo Plus. I have After the End, The Elitist Supremacy and Colliding Forces in it. This is also a promo I've set up because there are so few promos exclusively for Sci Fi books.

I've already talked of After the End, so I want to talk about the other two books that I have in the promo here.

​The Elitist Supremacy was an unplanned book in that I didn't even have a vague idea or inkling that I would write such a story. But once I started, I couldn't stop, and the first draft was done in three weeks. It was way back in 2018, and has undergone several rounds of revisions to get to where it is now.

When I started writing, I had no idea it would become a series, but it did. I finished Rise of the Resistance, the second book, in 9 days during the 2018 Nanowrimo, which was the first time I'd ever managed to write 50k words in a month. It was also the year I discovered my writing groups and Discord, and I love all the friends I made due to it.

The remaining books took some time to start and end, but I'm happy with the series as it stands.

​Colliding Forces again, was something that came out of the blue. I just started writing, and there it was. The first draft was around 19k words, and I had to revise it quite a lot. The present book is at 40k words, so it more than doubled in length during revisions.

I am finding new things to love about Kobo Plus every month. Like, you can truly get unlimited books and read them whenever you want. Also, far less expensive than KU. It's just an awesome platform and subscription.

Our Author of the Month has her books on Kobo Plus as well even if they aren't part of the promo!

I will likely be back around the 19th with more news and other things!

Till then, stay safe and take care of yourselves.

As always, you can find my books on sale here and all my books here.