All posts by serobertsonfiction_otmr8p

Sticky: Cozy the Day Away Sale

Next sale date: April 26! More info here at Promise Press, the organizers of the sale.

The Healers’ Road is officially part of the sale, but I have set the whole trilogy at 99c in the US / 99p in the UK per ebook for that week (April 25-29, technically the morning of the 30th). The print book is the same as usual.

I’m sure I’ll post about my haul as well. I plan to break my one-in one-out policy for this, so you know I’m taking it seriously. 😉

And… …done.

Therapist book 6, Starting Over in Another World With My Level 99 Self-Doubt, is on its way. As soon as the links are live, I’ll update the sticky post above.

I say this a lot, and I say it because it’s true: I really liked this one. It’s actually low-key apart from some references to past stress; it has some of the same elements as the first four books through a very different narrator POV; it brings us back to a fun setting (the tavern) and gives it more room to breathe.

Also, let’s be honest, plant nerdery.

So that’s exciting. Still looking forward to the sale at the end of April. Personal life is still in limbo. That’s all for now.

Neat sales news

Just a quick post to confirm/celebrate that The Healers’ Road will be part of the Cozy the Day Away Sale on April 26. This should be a lot of fun; it’s a group promotion for cozy (and *cough* cozy-adjacent) fantasy with an emphasis on diversity in both story and authorship. For more on the sale generally, check out Promise Press. (I know I’m going to fill out my “books I’ve been meaning to get eventually” list.)

Specifically, all three Healers ebooks will be 0.99 in the US and UK from April 25-30. I apologize to all the other parts of the world; Amazon’s sales tools are pretty limited.

I’m working on getting a book-newsletter type ad in the same timeframe. Fingers crossed.

On the topic of diversity, something I care a lot about, let’s not get this twisted: I listed THR’s diversity categories (Kei is the patron saint of damaged bisexual cinnamon rolls and I am not taking any questions at this time or ever), but did not list myself as a diverse author. This isn’t out of any kind of shame or secrecy, but more because I’m uncomfortable justifying/defending/proving my own categories. I have a whole history of grappling with the Not Nonbinary Enough demons and the How Can You Possibly Be Bi and Ace at the Same Time firing squad, as well as acknowledging the touchy optics of being a female-passing person in a long-term relationship with a cis man. I don’t want to take up space in the queer universe, even as I promote it constantly. It’s complicated.

So there’s that. But. I am excited to be a part of this event.

Back and forth, once again

Honestly, this is not really a surprise at this point: I gain and lose motivation over time. I’ve gotten better at consistency in spite of it, but the underlying oomph still very much goes in waves.

It’s been a rough year in a death-by-a-thousand-cuts sort of way, though of course, that’s all relative to one’s frame of reference. We’re still alive and we have a home, but life is stressful right now. In particular, a long-running, background health concern turned into a foreground concern, as a body part I don’t actually need decided to riot / melt down / freak out. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, although it will take a string of tests running up to the procedure and some recuperation afterward. In the meantime, I’m tired, stressed, and holding on until the next round of tests. Because there is a chance it’s something even more scary than a rogue body part, and until I get that all-clear, I’m going to worry. It’s what I do. [edit from the future: I got the all-clear. Not Cancer(tm)! Woohoo!]

Lately I have been pushing myself to write The Serious Fiction, because those readers have had to wait long enough, and there are more of them than for The Silly Fiction. But while it’s going (slowly), I don’t think I can spare the energy to pour into pushing myself. As long as something (anything) gets written, that might have to be good enough.

All of which is to say that I’ve started writing Therapist again, specifically the Bard College story featuring Greta, Henry, and Burleigh from book 3. Will it end up being finished as quickly as the others? Heck if I know. But it’s something. And I’m deciding that “something” is good enough.


Amazon has started a beta trial of AI-voiced audiobooks. First, fuck you, pay narrators; second, I care about my readership enough not to charge them for bullshit robot voices when you can use bullshit robot Read Aloud features for free. Third, fuck you, pay narrators. 🙂

The screening process has pointed out that some of the table of contents in my catalog are effed up, so I will use it to troubleshoot that. And then not take the greed-bait.


Therapist book 6 (Berry’s, Starting Over in Another World with My Level 99 Self-Doubt) is still in cover limbo. 🙂 Hey, the title designer is doing me a favor here.

Book 7 came back from the beta readers (thank you!!!), so it’s in the pipeline. After an evening hammering away at a thesaurus, the working title has morphed into The Salty Mageknight and the Sweet Dark Lord. For a minute it was The Spicy Courtship of the Salty Mageknight and the Sweet Dark Lord, but I don’t need agita from the type of reader who would take “spicy” literally. It’s not spicy even by TikTok standards.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Both are still coming. Eventually. Fate willing, so is Healers 4, someday. I will do my goddamn utmost, because this is what I love to do.

A grab bag for February

Today’s productive(?) procrastination: researching cover trends to decide whether I want to overhaul the Healers covers. The promo didn’t work; therefore, something must be wrong that keeps people from clicking. I honestly still like covers 1 and 3, but I have to face the fact that they don’t look like the other covers out there in the cozy/literary fantasy space. That’s a hindrance.

If I do end up doing this, then all my agita about print editions is out the window; I will, in that case, redesign the interiors too.

I find this all kind of fascinating to research, but wildly out of my wheelhouse (I am not a visual person at all). It’s also exhausting to have to make decisions about it. But hey. That’s the fate of self-publishing.


Listened to another podcast episode that got me to buy a book: Why Do So Many Coffee Shops Look the Same?

Likewise, this kind of analysis is fascinating to me and wildly outside my wheelhouse, as someone who is not visually oriented and has never taken to social media that is visually oriented. Have not read the book yet; I’ll get to it soon.


Recent reads/recommendations include the entirety of Greenwing & Dart (the series feels unfinished, but I loved it up to that point), Wyngraf’s Valentine’s Day 2024 special (adorable) and the first couple of omnibi of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (sad and adorable; will have more to say about this once I read the whole series).


Look at that, we’re halfway through the Winter 2024 anime season. TIme might be linear after all.

  • Delicious in Dungeon: Love it. Characterization is a breath of fresh air in a world of stale tropes. Opening theme is a banger. Calls on fantasy/RPG nostalgia without mindlessly copy-pasting. Only one notable female character so far (the other one is languishing in a dragon’s colon), but she is great despite being the party’s constant naysayer. We’ve been on the verge of cancelling Netflix among our raft of streaming services, and now I’m kind of mad that this has dragged me back in.
  • Mr. Villain’s Day Off: I think it’s accomplishing the “one joke” better than Too Cute Crisis did, which is why I’m still watching it. Not perfect — I’d like to dig six inches deeper on the characters they’ve established rather than just throwing in more and more new ones — but it’s refreshing to have a show that focuses on achievable work/life balance instead of throwing its hands up and saying “welp, the only way out is to die and get isekai’d, lol.”
  • ‘Tis Time for “Torture,” Princess — this season’s “this is so silly, and yet I’m still watching” pick. Nothing makes sense, but it’s oddly charming. Also not perfect (see the game of pervy chicken they’re playing with the paladin character), but mostly harmless. There is a large cast of adorable demons who take excellent care of each other and their prisoners, and I’m a sucker for that.
  • Have not started Sign of Affection yet; I’ll tackle it in the backlog later.
  • Backlog we’re still working on: Natsume’s Book of Friends, Isekai Izakaya, The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent, Revue Starlight. I had to pause RS for a bit when I didn’t have the stomach for drama, but I’m back in. Hidive, your days are also numbered. Sorry. Akiba Maid War was fucking fantastic and I’m glad I finally got through Penguindrum, but there are only a few more series I want to watch in your lineup.

edit to add: ooh, I forgot one! I started a Zoom guitar class. Having loads of fun. It seems like some of the general concepts I learned with the ukulele are carrying over, which is nice, but the strings are SO much sharper!

Constructive procrastination, part n+1

Here’s the path that unfolded this week:

“Oh, I ought to update my bio on the Healers books. I haven’t changed it in a million years.”

“…These epub files were all hand-coded, and I kind of mentally refused to do that incredibly fiddly task ever again. …Right.”

*uploads doc version*

*chaos ensues*

*sigh* “Okay, Atticus. Do your thing.” [not an affiliate link, I don’t do that]

*incredibly boring montage: two evenings of correcting chapter titles, chapter breaks of various kinds, and italics*

Result: We have slightly more polished versions of all three Healers ebooks, or we will as soon as Amazon finishes processing them (usually within 24 hours). The print books haven’t changed. I plan to keep hand-coding/laying out the print books, because I’m sure it would be annoying to have books 1-3 match and 4+(?) not match. However, I think an ebook can be re-downloaded at any point, so it doesn’t seem like it’s as big a deal.

That said, if you are a reader who’s run into issues along those lines with my books, please send me an email (info on About page). We’ll figure out what needs to be done.

The actual changes are:

  • took out the summary at the beginning of THR; that isn’t a thing anyone does anymore [I did leave the “previously” summaries in 2 and 3]
  • new copyright page (ooh, thrilling) – same info, just formatted slightly differently
  • nicer font on the chapter headings
  • slight changes to the afterwords, linking to the next book in the series
  • entirely new About page

Since the new About page links to all of my books, I will end up updating it every time I publish another book. I’ve chained myself to this situation, I know, but I like how it turned out. Eventually I will probably whip up a standard About page for the C.A. Moss books as well. (So I can update almost a dozen books every time instead of three.)

Until then, I’m reflecting on the snippets that I read as I skimmed through. As much as I’ve rhapsodized about taking a break from the series, I still really love it, y’all. I do. It’s extremely emotional and the plots don’t always make sense and I love it.

I have started writing Healers 4, picking up where 3 left off. I’d like to finish this one in a more reasonable time than the last. That’s my goal.

EDIT, a few days later: Also added a content notes page at the start of each Healers book. I decided to apply for a cozy fantasy group promotion, and since I know my work is only at the edge of cozy, I thought it would be best to be extra, extra, extra clear about the content.

The promotion hasn’t happened yet, but it’s being organized by promisepress.org if you’re interested in signing up as a reader or author.

2 months of winter to go

Therapist book 6 is with the cover designer, which is generally the last stop before release. I really like this one, too. I mean, I really like every single one of them. As we get to the end of the novellas I’ve finished/nearly finished, I’m sad to shift away from this series, at least for a while. Ah, well. Chances are I’ll circle back after another Healers book. And I hope I’ve learned enough from this experience to take back over to Healers, like how to write faster, for the love of all that’s good and holy

(ahem)

I’m not remotely done with this series anyway; book 7 is still with the beta readers, and then I plan to commission another paperback cover and compile 5-7 on paper. So we won’t see the back of this series for a little while yet, even leaving aside future as-yet-unwritten stories.


I’ve spent the last seven weeks line- and copy-editing my spouse’s first novel. It’s been an exciting process seeing this whole thing take shape. He’s supported me through half a million words’ worth of my stuff; it’s about time I got to even begin to return the favor. And it’s a lovely story.

And honestly? I enjoy this part. There’s a reason The Healers’ Road circled around, unfinished and endlessly re-edited, for something like 5 years before I broke the cycle and finished a complete draft. I love tweaking a sentence. Probably to my own detriment.

I also discovered that editing on paper somehow clicks with my brain. Maybe because I don’t often read on paper these days; I’ve been Ebook Hive for 12 years now. So I don’t get sucked into the story in the same way. However it happens, it seems to work. So I guess next time I edit one of my own, I’m printing the thing out.


Gaming: 70 hours into Tears of the Kingdom, so, y’know, less than halfway. I started Breath of the Wild in late fall on purpose, planning to zone out through the winter on these two games. Which is exactly what’s happening. Though I am trying to limit my time on weekdays: work, sleep, writing/editing, and exercise take priority. It’s mostly fine.

As with pretty much any open-world game, I am inclined toward exploring and collecting. Just finished all the petroglyphs/memories and did the Thing that the Game Nudges You Toward Right After That. (y’know, the thing where you hold the A button for a long long time)

Actually, narratively, doing things in that order was quite effective. Though I was spoiled for the end of the game by watching my spouse finish it a few years ago; it probably would have been quite a whallop if I hadn’t known. It’s okay. I was still moved. For a series not known for its narrative coherence, it’s doing just fine by me.

Better things around the corner

“One day at a time” mode is never a fun place to be. Of course, January is sometimes a little bit like this anyway; this is just a January of Januaries.

However, Therapist book 6 is almost ready — I hope to release it by the end of the month if all goes well. This one is Berry’s story (the retired adventurer from book 3), and it might be the most mellow of the series? I think it is.

In the Winter 2024 anime season, we’re trying Mr. Villain’s Day Off (already relatable, don’t mess it up), Delicious in Dungeon (fun so far), and A Sign of Affection (haven’t started it yet). It looks like ‘Tis Time for “Torture”, Princess is, despite its title, a food porn show, and we tend to like those in this house. But the descriptions I’ve seen make me kind of tired for reasons I can’t quite articulate, so that may go on the back burner (heh) for now.

[Edit, like 1 day later: I had some down time, and tried the first episode. Funny enough to keep going.]

Still working on The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent season 1, Natsume’s Book of Friends season 1, and Isekai Izakaya in the backlog, and I’m also midway through created-in-a-lab-for-the-likes-of-me Revue Starlight. We’ve got enough to watch for now.