Thank you sweetheart. Honestly, I can’t even celebrate at all. I felt a lot of shame and embarrassment about the topic (pup) and it took me months to feel any pride in it. That only came after a shit ton of editing, since it was first rejected due to all the errors and then only accepted cause someone dropped out. Sooo many errors, I was so happy to smite them all. Or not.

Eddie Izzard once said if you’re a woman and you trip in heels, you’ll be embarrassed, but if a bloke trips in heels, he has to kill himself. I think my pride is wounded more so because I took a risk on a not well understood niche of BDSM lifestyles and the risk did not pay off. Someone on Goodreads gave it 2 out of 5 stars, too. Also, my Tumblr readers do not seem to care for my publications – those posts get very very few likes/reblogs compared to my normal captions. I don’t get why. So now I’m embarrassed too cause I hyped it up to an uninterested crowd and now I gotta retract it all.

And that said, my self esteem is very fragile cause I’m trying to climb out of depression. Every time I see my Tumblr inbox envelope light up I assume it’s something negative. I was really hoping Orion was gonna get good reception, but nope. I also could have used the money from good sales, but nope. Just another nope in a line of nopes.

The cover is awesome though.

So Orion’s New Leash on Life came out yesterday. I finally got up the nerve to look at the published piece….and some edits were not made in the final print. Really big errors. Like, at the end, one of the minor character’s names gets switched around back and forth with another character’s name by mistake so it’s going to confuse the hell out of my readers. I also spotted an instance where the tense switched from third to first person.

I already sent out my promo copies to reviewers and like 5 people already bought it …and shit. Just shit. Dreamspinner was right in rejecting the story the first time around because it just had too many errors to fix before the printing deadline. It went through three rounds of editing, and we all still missed these. But, it’s mostly my fault because I wrote it not only under extreme pressure, having found out about the anthology last minute, but also under extreme stress from real life work. 

So I’m really sorry everyone. I’m gonna try to resolve this. If anyone who bought it finds my way to my Tumblr and wants a refund, I’ll personally mail you a check or some such thing. I might just have the thing pulled, because I just can’t anymore.

I’m so nervous, I think I’m going to be ill. I feel very unwell.

It’s $3.99 USD and here is the URL: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=5142
And here is the anthology URL and it’s $64.99: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=5113

As of right now there isn’t a Goodreads page for it, but I will look into getting one set up. There is now, bitches. I haven’t gotten the goddamn promo copies yet, so there aren’t any Tumblr reviews.

Thank you for your patience with this everyone, and thank you for reading. It’s 3 am and I spent all day doing a very long organizational gig, so I’m checking out. I’m going to do a proper post tomorrow with the cover image and credits, if you’d like to wait to reblog it then.

I was talking to randomchub15 in an Ask, and they replied with a question that Tumblr wouldn’t let me publish so I’m posting it here:

Your stories are so well written and amazingly sexy. I wish I could write like you, do you have any tips for a young writer such as myself?

First of all, thank you. I strive to be sexy although I don’t know in what capacity I’m turning on my readers. I’ve given at least one person a boner, so that’s good. Secondly, technically my stories aren’t well written. When I submitted the Orion story to Dreamspinner Press for their Mended anthology, it was initially rejected because there were too many errors. I only got on because someone dropped out (woot!).

Writing takes a lot of technical skill. I tend to switch tenses a lot and I often find glaring typos when reading old posts. The other day I confused a character in a story. So, I guess my primary advice for a young writer is be aware of your spelling and grammar. I used the word “taunt” for months before a reader kindly pointed out that “taut” is the correct word. Oops.

Another thing I’d suggest is to read – a lot. Read a ton of different authors. Read fiction, non-fiction, articles, opinion pieces, magazines, etc. You’ll find things you like and things you hate, and it’ll help shape your voice when you write. Also, learning about new things will constantly provide you with inspiration for characters, plots, and settings. I think it was Stephan King that said when he needs names for characters, he gets them from the phone book.

Lastly, there is a huge difference between writing for yourself and writing for an audience – basically, between free-writing and creating a product. If you’re creating a product, you need to consider the reaction of your potential or current audience. And for gods sake, listen to your readers. They know more about your writing than you.
In the way beginning, I did a lot of sort of aggressive stuff because I thought that’s what readers on other Tumblrs wanted. I didn’t get a good response. Once in a while, I’d do something softer and sweeter for fun and I started getting messages like “I love that you write about the sensitive side of bdsm relationships”. I’d go, “what? I did what?”. Turns out there was a whole pool of readers that wanted that, and so now I write what I want to write – not what I thought others want – and my readers are happy.

I’m not gonna write you a novel here, but to summarize: grammar, spelling, read a lot, listen to your fans. And don’t stop writing. <3

(Oh, and it’s ok to hate your writing. All writers do at some point. This is why we have editors.)

I recently changed my Facebook profile to a Facebook author page which will make it easier to interact with my readers of my published work.

I swapped URLs so it’s still the same destination:
https://www.facebook.com/ccallenreese 

As a reminder, Orion’s New Leash On Life comes out as part of the Mended anthology on June 1st. The individual story will also be released that day as well but the URL won’t go live until June 1st so it won’t compete with the Mended pre-orders.

Thanks for reading!

We have a date! My second publication, Orion’s New Leash on Life, goes on sale in e-book formats on June 1st, 2014! It will be one of 30 stories in Dreamspinner Press’s Daily Dose anthology, Mended. Essentially, when you purchase this anthology, you will get one story a day in the theme of healing for the entire month of June. You’re never too old for bed time stories, boys and girls.

For the rest of April, you can pre-order the entire package of 30 stories in Mended for $39.99 (which is $1.33 a story). In May that will go up to $49.99, and then in June for $64.99. If you click that link to the pre-order page, you can read summaries of all 30 stories to make sure it’s up your alley. So far, it looks like Orion’s is the only BDSM flavored story there! I’m so nervous since I went on a limb and did a pup fetish piece.

My story has gone through three rounds of merciless editing, but I got this feedback from the editors today: “What an interesting story! The characters are well done and very dimensional. Good job!” Wish I could put that on the fridge.

If you’re on a budget, Orion’s New Leash on Life will also be sold as an individual e-book featuring the adorably sexy gayboykink on the cover. However, the landing page for that is not available yet.

Thank you all for reading!