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Category: fantasy

  • Is Fantasy the right genre?

    My fantasy book “The Last Families” is a dystopian story that has characters with supernatural powers. But is Fantasy the right genre?

    Almost after 6 months of its release, I have come to this question. Shouldn’t I have properly defined the genre before releasing the book? I supposed I should’ve.

    From the single instant, I began imagining and writing this fantastic world where these characters with talents/superpowers existed, I knew it had to be fantasy. Nothing of that exists or will exist in this world.

    But as I got reviews, most of them quoted “The Last Families” as a dystopian post-apocalyptical story. It got me wondering.

    According to Merriam-webster, a dystopia is:

    an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives

    The Last Families has something of that. It makes sense. It is dystopian because it talks about a future world with less than utopic circumstances. The characters are the last survivors of their world. They are looking for refuge and arrive at a place that is everything but hospitable. Of course, they are fearful as in the definition.

    Is it post-apocalyptic? The definition of post-apocalyptic says:

    existing or occurring after a catastrophically destructive disaster or apocalypse In a postapocalyptic world where nature has become just as violent as humanity 

    So yes, The Last Families definitely complies with this too. The story takes place after their land has been destroyed. We came to assume that these people are somehow future descendants of humans but with certain particularities. Therefore, we could say that this is a future that could somehow exist in the future? I would say overly farfetched.

    Therefore it is a dystopia and a post-apocalyptic story. And it turns out that these two are subgenres of Science Fiction, and not of Fantasy. That is where I was surprised. Being a big reader of Science Fiction, I never thought of The Last Families as belonging to this genre, but somehow it has been categorized under it.

    Now, there is “Science Fantasy”. A new genre. Thank god for new inventions. The definition is familiar:

    Science fantasy is a hybrid genre within speculative fiction that simultaneously draws upon or combines tropes and elements from both science fiction and fantasy.

    I think that is where my book fits better.

    Unfortunately, like many new genres, you won’t find them listed anywhere. If you look for categories with a Print On Demand service, Listing sites, Literary Agents, and Book Reviewers, you will find Romance, Science Fiction, Mystery, Fantasy, Young Adult, and other “general” categories. New genres and Sub-genres are not included.

    So, does this screw things for how I’ve been listing my book? I don’t think so. In fact, I’ll see it as a new opportunity. Until yesterday, the book was mainly targetting Fantasy categories and keywords. Now I’m targetting dystopian, post-apocalyptic, and science fantasy. Maybe a new refreshing audience to target.

    What do you think? Should I still call it Fantasy?

    You haven’t gotten your copy of The Last Families yet?

  • Book Release “The Last Families”

    I’m happy to announce the official release of my first fantasy novel “The Last Families”:

  • Receiving the first copy of my book

    It took around one month for a copy of my printed book to get here. If you remember my previous post where I made a reflection of who I chose a Print on Demand service, you will remember that Lulu was the chosen one.

    In order to start distributing paperback copies and have your book listed under services like Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, Kobo, Google Books, and others, they send you a printed copy of your book for you to approve it. It makes sense, especially when you design the interior and take care of all the formatting needed for the book. You want to make sure that the book is printing well, and the format and design you uploaded are showing correctly before it is distributed to other websites.

    So after uploading my PDF (with all the needed formatting that I had to learn) and uploading a cover file (which was designed by a friend), the paperback copy was ready and therefore, I ordered a copy for “approval”.

    Given my bad experience with carriers like DHL and the terrible Bolivian regular mail, I decided to use a service called Aeropost. It is a service for most Latin American countries. You send your order to an address in Miami (meaning that the shipping inside the US is quite fast and not expensive), and from there they consolidate their packages and bring them over to Bolivia. When I talked with the Aeropost sales representative, they said it would take the most 10 days. It was a decent waiting time for me. I paid online $14, which wasn’t that bad compared to what DHL would charge you, and waited.

    After ten days, I could still see my package not having left Miami. After calls to Aeropost, it turned out that they were using a very low-key military airline to bring the packages over and that airline had stopped their flights. They were trying to negotiate shipping with a new airline. Short story, it took one month for the package to get there. Regular mail would have taken almost the same, around 6 weeks. That delayed all the plans that I had to release the book in November. The book got here at the beginning of this week and I just approved the printed copy on Lulu’s website. Now there is a wait time of 8 weeks, after approval, for your book to be listed on other services. At this pace, I only hope the book will be out there this year (crossing fingers it will be for Christmas).

    I thought it would be fun to record myself at the moment of receiving my book, unpackaging it, and seeing it for the first time. I didn’t know if I was going to use that video for social media or not. Maybe I really didn’t like the book, and my reaction was terrible, but I decided to do it anyway. Anyway, it would be a good memory to recall: that time when I first saw a copy of my first book. The book looks quite good. The cover is awesome and printing has gone very well. All formatting looks top-notch and I feel relieved.

    I thought it would be a good idea to embed this Instagram video here: (if you are not seeing the video play, please click on the image)

    Now, let’s cross fingers I can announce the book’s release for this year.

  • Why Fantasy? Why The Last Families?

    When I started writing several years ago, it took me sometime to decide which was the genre that worked for me the best. I started with thrillers, thinking that it would be difficult to create a fantasy or science fiction world. I love reading thrillers, that can’t be questioned, but I also love reading other genres like fantasy.

    I thought that developing characters and a story in a world that already existed would work for me better as a beginner writer. But setting a story in a current world is not easy. You still have to do research, know the place where it will take place, research about the people in this place, the language they use, etc. After a first manuscript that didn’t work well, I realized that I wasn’t that good at establishing a current environment, so I thought I would give it a try with fantasy.

    But would I be imaginative enough to figure out a whole fictional world? Would I have the words and imagination for world building, aside from character building? I didn’t know. I doubted myself a lot, but I still started with a story that I had a long time in mind.

    When I started writing “The Last Families”, I gave it a simple title “New World”. It was because I was writing about a new world and thought it would be better to name it like that than simply “Manuscript”. I started describing those fantasy landscapes that I had imagined before. It wasn’t that bad and I enjoyed the process. Some time later (a couple of years) here I’m with my first fantasy novel.

    I’m not sure if fantasy is all I’m ever going to write but my next story is still in this genre. There is a mix of science fiction in some parts of The last Families and I’ll probably explore this genre a bit more in the future. Right now, I’m happy that I get to explore my imagination much better than when I was trying to adapt my stories to an existing world just because of writing comfort. I feel better challenging myself.

    THE LAST FAMILIES WEBSITE

  • Underlying topics in “The Last Families”

    The fact that a story has fantasy in it doesn’t mean that its whole world is made up and not related to current topics related to our own world. But if it wasn’t because I had to write a pitch, a synopsis, and disclaimers for this book, I wouldn’t have thought of the harsh underlying topics in the story:

    • End of the world /post-apocalyptic. Even though The Last Families happens in a fictional world, there is a background and time to the story. African, the last continent left on Earth, refers to a world that is far in the future, after the other continents have become lost somehow. The Last Families characters are still escaping from this last continent that is now facing its destruction.
    • Skin color/race as a factor to survive – Without going too much into details and telling part of the story here, the new place where the families have arrived, Gambir, has extreme circumstances that make that some people with certain skin color have better chances to survive.
    • Superiority of some families – Some families, like the Ninfires, believe they are superior than others. The idea of a group of people superior to other is still current relevant issue, no matter in which country we are located.
    • Misogyny – This is of course a characteristic that belongs to a villain, Ian, and even though this is a fictional world, unfortunately it can still be present.

    There are still other harsh topics in “The Last Families” but that are better discovered during the story. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the story is only dark, it is also a story of love, leadership, tolerance, sacrifice and compassion.

    The last families website

    Coming soon!

  • The Last Families Website

    When I started working on my launch plan, the website was a no brainer. That is the only thing that I would be able to pull it out myself without hiring somebody else. I’m happy to admit that I really enjoyed the process and the website is ready.

    check The Last families’ website

    For any other authors out there that might be seeking into setting up a website for their book, and you are not sure what content to include, after doing some research, this is the content that I included:

    • A Homepage that summarizes most of the website’s content, from the book’s release info, author, contact form, etc. The idea is that most people won’t navigate further than the homepage and won’t even click the navigation menus.
    • An About the Author page. This is a must in a book’s website. I included a short bio- the same that is placed in the back of the book’s cover. I have the belief that it has to include a good picture, people could want to meet/see the author.
    • A link to the Author’s blog, that means to this blog. I don’t think I’ll have a blog section in the book’s website. Maybe in the future. Although I’m not really sure what would I blog about. But in the meantime, I have this blog that has been running since 2015 with over a hundred of posts. So why not link to this blog? That is a good way to get more followers in “The Diaries of the Happy Writer”.
    • A Contact page where anybody can contact me. I’m mostly thinking of people who might be interested in an ARC (Advanced Read Copy) or something like that.
    • The controversial “Fanfiction” page which after some careful consideration in a previous post, I decided to give it a go. It’s not like I’m a world famous author and will get myself into suing readers for copyright issues. The more people that can read my book, the better, and I’m honored if someone ever thinks of writing fanfiction about it.
    • The Reviews page. Although, reviews are preferred in store sites like Amazon or Goodreads, it is still okay for me if people want to leave their review on site. The page will still include, of course, links to the retailers’ sites.

    The homepage links to a synopsis of the story too where I had the chance to use my wonderful illustrations.

    I’m pretty sure this content is not stone-fixed. While this adventure of self-publishing my book continues, I’m pretty sure that I will find myself re-doing certain things. I might need to add other sections to the website that I hadn’t thought before. A blog section could be needed to boost the SEO, for example. But at this stage, I’m happy to say that The Last Families’s website is ready. Please make sure to click the button and subscribe to get updates:

    check The Last families’ website

  • The Last Families – The Cover Reveal

    I finally have a cover for my first fantasy novel “The Last Families” and I’m extremely happy to reveal it:

    Printed Version

    Ebook version

    The cliffs in the cover are inspired by the first opening paragraph of the “The Last Families”:

    Blood climbed at least half a mile towards the sky. That was Yarisha’s first impression when she saw the crimson hue that covered the tallest cliffs she’d ever seen. The immense island above them resembled a piece of land floating on the water’s surface. Judging by the marks on the red cliffs, the water could have been higher once. Whatever mineral drenched the rocks, it painted them a deep red. This wasn’t the dreamiest place one would expect, but the families didn’t have anywhere else to go. Their own land had been destroyed.

    Thanks to Pablo Rico for his great work on this cover.

    The book launches soon in November. Subscribe to this blog to get more updates:

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  • Fan Fiction when you are an Author

    If you’ve been a follower of this blog for a long time, you probably know that I started as a fan fiction writer. I don’t have any shame about it. I think that there is no better compliment as an author to have “fans” of your story. These fans have the story so glued in their brains and understand the characters so well, that they want to write a fan fiction about it. They might be looking forward to doing alternative endings, or simply writing scenes that were not mentioned in the book that somehow they can imagine happening. If you write a fan fiction story, it is usually because you liked the story, the characters made an imprint on you, and you feel they deserve your time to write about them.

    Photo by Startup Stock Photos on Pexels.com

    I know that many authors are against fan fiction. To many it looks as if others are stealing their characters and breaching copyright. I thought a lot about this. But being a good follower of many fan fiction platforms, I’m aware that in most of the cases, there is always a disclaimer at the beginning of the story, about who the characters belong to and also author’s recognition.

    Therefore, I would love to have a “The Last Families” (my fantasy novel to be released soon) reader who wanted to write a fan fiction story about it. Building a fan base is quite hard and what better way to encourage fans than allowing them to be creative?

    In addition, for those that are not much into writing, there are also fan-made illustrations. I believe it is an honor to have fans spend time into crafting and drawing illustrations about your characters and/or scenes. I’ve seen many of these illustrations on Pinterest and Tumblr only because I’ve also followed boards of books/stories/movies that I enjoyed and I was excited to see illustrations coming alive.

    Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

    I’m about to finish by book’s website. But I’ve come across one idea that I haven’t seen much out there. Maybe there is an author who’s done it but I’m not aware of him or her. I want my readers to feel enticed to write fan fiction stories and to draw/illustrate their favorite characters scenes. I’v been thinking of including a section in the book’s website where they can submit those. The submission form will mostly make sure that there is a disclaimer about the use of my characters and story. I don’t know if it will work. I don’t if it will mess the copyright things. I only want the readers of “The Last Families” to be able to have a space, with the author’s consent, to submit their stories. where they can have their own side plots, alternative endings and unwritten scenes. I also want the readers to find an interactive section on this website where they can read and see fan fiction and illustrations submitted by other readers. I’m not sure if this idea will work or even if I will have people who like the story so much in order to devote time to it. But the idea has been nagging me for a long time. After all, there is no way to avoid from fan fiction happening on other platforms. I’ve been a fan fiction writer myself and it would have been great to submit my stories to the author as a tribute of how much I enjoyed their story. I only know that the I have to dare and try. I don’t have much to lose. It is self-published and I’m the only person who owns the rights. What do you think?

    Photo by Min An on Pexels.com

  • Choosing a Print on Demand service (Second Part)

    In the first part of my post, I started recounting about the Print-On-Demand services that I researched to self-publish my first fantasy novel “The Last Families”. I found many roadblocks on KDP, IngramSpark, and BookBaby. It was time to consider others.

    Photo by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels.com

    Draft2Digital was my next option. I’ve already been getting newsletters from them and they had good reviews online. I thought this service was meant to be the one. Like BookBaby, Draft2Digital uses PayPal and Payoneer to send payments to authors. PayPal is still an issue for me, since this payment gateway doesn’t completely work in Bolivia (you can’t connect it to a bank account), but you can still receive payments in your PayPal account and use them as available credits for other future online payments. Payoneer, on the other hand, is a better solution for me. I can actually cash out that money with it. Given this payment advantage, I was already excited with Draft2Digital and I thought I had found the one. I’m not sure how I didn’t notice that it was only for ebooks. Print-on- Demand was still on beta and not quite available yet to all their customers. Well, time to go to the next one.

    LuLu or Blurb. Those two were the final ones on my list.

    Weird enough, there weren’t many reviews on Blurb. I had found some comments online that they didn’t get any cut on profits, but other sources said they did. Of course, I planned writing their support to clarify about the profit issue, but in the meantime I had been exploring their platform a bit more. They asked you to download a software on your computer to work with your manuscript and convert it to a printable file. That was the first barrier. I never got their software to work on my computer, and yes, I’m computer savvy. I wrote to their support service and followed the steps they provided but nop, the software didn’t work. I was still giving them a chance and trying to make the software work when I decided to look at their website shop. All these Print-on-Demand services offer you to sell your book on their web shops, besides the big distribution partners (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.) But Blurb is mainly focused on books with visuals/photos- I’ve heard their software does wonders for books with photos for example. Unfortunately, their website shop is not the place where I want my Fantasy novel to be listed. They do list fiction, but it is not their focus and I don’t see any advantage of being listed with them. I doubt any bookshop or small library will look into Blurb’s website for fiction. It is sad, but true at this point. A couple of days later, I found the final barrier when I dug more into their shipping policies, they ship to North America and the EU, but not Bolivia. Sorry, bye Blurb.

    Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

    That made me pass to Lulu. And although they pay with PayPal, not Payoneer, it was the option that didn’t present any other harsh barriers. They get 20% of profits. I had to say okay. They ship worldwide. Their website bookshop is not that bad. Their platform is quite easy to follow. They distribute to Amazon and the others. And although, I might only see earnings in the form of PayPal Credits, I guess that is acceptable for the moment. They get you a free ISBN, so that is always good. Therefore, Lulu is the chosen one for the moment. (You don’t have to stick with one of these services, you can always cancel a service with them and work with another in the future).

    I’m also happy to say that I have a second alternative for issues with shipping to Bolivia, using Aeropost. I know since the book is in English, the main book’s market is abroad and not my country, but I still want to have the option to get them to Bolivia. I still want to order around a half-dozen books for friends and family over here. Amazon has been sending things to Bolivia with DHL. And it is the biggest mistake ever. I even called Amazon support about this. I’m not going to go in detail in this post, but aside from what you are charged for Shipping & Handling when you buy at Amazon’s website, you pay a lot of money here to DHL (more than what you paid for the order) for their “additional handling”. DHL Bolivia has these “minimum amounts” they charge for handling your package, even if the product was worth only U$5. Short story, Aeropost is a service for countries like Bolivia and others in Latin America. They give you an address in the US and you ship your orders there. Then they consolidate the packages and charge you for shipping and handling to Bolivia. It is not cheap but their fee is lower compared to the one from DHL. To give you a specific example, DHL charges a minimum of U$45 for handling, aside from custom taxes, for any item that is worth at least $1, in addition to the U$35 you paid for “shipping and handling” in Amazon’s website. It really doesn’t make any sense to me. It is too expensive. You are paying over U$95 (with taxes) to buy a U$10 book. Aeropost charges you shipping (U$17), customs taxes, and $5 for handling. In total, it is less than a third part of DHL’s fees in Bolivia. Unfortunately, those are some issues of living in a third-world country.

    Photo by Liza Summer on Pexels.com

    I know this post had a little bit of everything. And most of you might not have these issues at all. But it is still good to know what happens with other authors out there. My biggest hope is that this post reaches international authors who might be living in countries where these things are common and that my experience helps you a bit. At least to encourage to keep going on.

    My book cover should be ready soon. That is another story for another post. Once it is done, I’ll order my first Lulu copy for approval. So excited about this 🙂

  • Choosing a Print on Demand service

    In this path to self-publishing my first fantasy novel “The Last Families”, I’ve encountered many blocks. There are many services out there to Print-on-Demand, but they are mostly suitable for authors in the US and Canada. I live in Bolivia and that makes things a bit complicated. I don’t think I’m the only author facing these issues so probably this post is going to be helpful to authors in other countries that are not part of North America or the EU (which also has some advantages).

    I started with Amazon’s KDP. Of course being on Amazon is important and I’m planning two formats: a printed paperback and ebook. As soon as I started considering self-publishing, KDP entered my radar. I read all Amazon’s terms and agreements and fount out soon that I would be surrendering to them around 70% profits. Half of that is related to taxes since my country doesn’t have any agreement with the US regarding those. I’m still reviewing all this information to see what options and alternatives I have. Although I didn’t choose KDP for other reasons, soon explained, I still want to sell on Amazon. Therefore, I guess I still have to have this tax thing figured it out.

    Photo by Sagar Soneji on Pexels.com

    The main reason why I didn’t chose KDP is because they pay by check. And yes, this is the only alternative they offer for international authors. I have many issues with that. First, if a check is sent by regular mail to Bolivia, then there are at least 80% chances that it won’t get here. The Mail in Bolivia is a disaster, and at this point, I’m not even sure if it is working with the pandemic. Before Covid, it sort of worked, but it took around four or more months for your correspondence to get to you. Small envelops, postcards, don’t always arrive, they simply get lost. At this moment, I believe the Mail company is heading towards bankruptcy, and as far as I know, mail hasn’t gotten here since 2019. But even if the Mail company started to work and the check managed to get here, there is another issue. I called my bank and asked how much is the fee to cash an international check. They provided the following example: If your check is U$100, the bank has a minimum of U$35 fee for international checks and 15% on the total, so U$50 will be deducted for a U$100 check (which is also the minimum that Amazon pays). That is half of the earnings. No way, I’m going this route.

    Photo by Blue Bird on Pexels.com

    Then I had a quick passage through IngramSpark and quickly found a roadblock when I filled my account and billing details and got a message that more or less said, “Your country doesn’t support digital signatures so we are not able to provide our services at this point.” It was time to move to the next one.

    The next in my list was BookBaby. I always thought it looked quite decent. They distribute to Amazon and other major channels and besides, their online shop, BookShop, is really a good place to have your title listed, even small libraries and bookshops check their site to order some books. From a previous research, I already knew that I needed to buy an upfront plan to publish with them. It seemed to be around U$349 in a quick search. Their main advantage was that they wouldn’t take any profits on books sold on their site or to distributors. After considering this, I decided that it was worth making the investment. However, it was never meant to be only U$349. I navigated all ways on their platform and even called their support service to make sure I was doing things right. I turns out that I needed an initial order of 25 books. There was no way to get a lower quantity, and with shipping to Bolivia, and adding other things like ISBN (which they charge $39), I was soon close to U$1000 before checkout. Nop, discarded.

    And since this story is a bit long, and to avoid getting you bored, I’m going to continue in a next post where I still consider a couple of options more before I get to the final one. See you in a next post in a few days.