Cross Talk

 The best thing about independent publishing and having a job that pays the bills is that I can see a set of pre-made book covers on Etsy and think "Those would work great for that cozy mystery novella I wrote a couple of years ago", and nobody is around to stop me before I put in my credit card information.

(In case the term is unfamiliar, pre-made book covers are just what they sound like -- book covers that are all ready to go after the title and author name are added. They tend to be a lot less expensive than a custom cover. Some people buy them and then write a book based on the cover. That would have seemed unbelievable to me before I started trying to figure out a cover for my next science fiction book. Now I'm thinking that it's a genius idea.)

Here are the problems challenges with me buying those cozy covers:

• They came as a set of three. I hadn't really intended to make a series. (On the other hand, I really enjoyed writing that novella, so now I'm going to write two more. Problem solved.)
  
  
• I've published exactly one book, and it's urban fantasy. There's pretty good overlap between readers of science fiction and fantasy, but mysteries without a fantastical element are a different kettle of fish. The obvious solution is to publish it under a different pen name, though I'm not going to hide the link between the two at all. (Problem solved, but a new one created.)
  
  
• A new pen name requires a new mailing list. I may be able to get away with one website, at least as long as it's not super popular. But basically I just doubled the amount of some of the administrative stuff that I need to do. (Ugh.)

But all this doesn't matter because I've already bought the covers and I love them. I believe I mentioned that it's good I have a day job, right?

Gratuitous Big Dog Picture

The big dog questions my decision-making skills at times...

"Perhaps I ought to take charge of the credit cards at night?"