Sticky post: Starting points

StickyThe Healers' Road (Book 1), Therapist in Another World Series

Hello!

If you’re new here, here’s where to start! (The opposite of the other sticky post!)

The Healers book 1 of 3: The Healers’ Road

by S.E. Robertson

Genre/keywords: slice-of-life fantasy, queernorm, shouting-distance-from-cozy fantasy but check the content warnings first please, character-driven, road trip from hell, unlikely friendship, please note: not a romance

The unexpected magic of friendship

Ambitious, opinionated, and the child of wealthy parents, Agna Despana commits to two years of service as a magical healer in a traveling caravan. Having spent half her life training as a healer, she’s out to prove herself and do good for the world.

After losing everything, former army medic Keifon throws himself on the gods’ mercy. Maybe helping people as a medic in a merchant caravan will give him direction, and a start toward rebuilding his life yet again.

Assigned as partners, these two strangers have two years on the road to find common purpose and bring healing to remote corners of an unfamiliar land — and to themselves.

The Healers’ Road is a low-stakes queernorm fantasy road trip featuring campfires and hot tea, good books, shared adventures, and a journey to discover the power of connection.

On Amazon – print and ebook, and on Kindle Unlimited where available
On Goodreads

Content Notes

How I Became a Therapist in Another World , novella 1 of 7

by C.A. Moss [also me]

Genre/keywords: fantasy isekai but make it tired, millennial, and gay; let’s throw all the tropes in a blender with a giant pile of feelings and see what we get; fish out of water; empathy as a superpower; humor and heart

Not the Chosen One, just doing my best 

After an unexpected accident, Cat wakes up in a new body in a world full of magic. If this is the afterlife, it’s a lot more cottagecore than she expected — even though it’s also haunted by demons that prey on people’s emotions.

Good thing this world summoned the right vintage-loving queer girl, because Cat — now Lavender — was a therapist on Earth. Wielding magic that gives others space to face their literal demons, she sets out to make a new life for herself. 

A world of new friends, territorial Earthlings, rampaging dragons, high society balls, and rollicking nights at the tavern is just down the country road. But so is the reckoning of what she’s lost…

How I Became a Therapist in Another World is a light fantasy heartwarming isekai novella with emotional moments and a wlw human/orc romance side plot. Lavender’s story continues in parts 2-4.

On Amazon – ebook and Kindle Unlimited where available
Books 1-4 are also available as an omnibus in ebook.
On Goodreads

Content Notes

Sticky post: Most Recent Releases / Upcoming

StickyThe Healers' Purpose (Book 3), Therapist in Another World Series

Welcome! Here are the newest releases. (The opposite of the other post!)

Healers / Balance Academy Series Book 3: The Healers’ Purpose

On Amazon – print and ebook; Kindle Unlimited where available
On Goodreads – rate and review

Content Notes

Released mid-August 2022

The Salty Mageknight and the Sweet Dark Lord (How I Became a Therapist in Another World book 7)

On Amazon – ebook and Kindle Unlimited where available

Content notes / Recap of the non-romance plot points if you are skipping this one

Released mid-April 2024

Road Map / What’s Next:

Healers series: The first draft of The Strangers’ Crossroads was completed at the end of September 2024, and I hope to finish editing by the end of 2025. This is in the Healers universe, but features different characters (other graduates from the Academy).

To be honest, I don’t know what comes after that in this series. Healers 4 was kind of in the works, but readers seem to consider that a finished series/trilogy, so I am holding off for the time being. It’s not out of the question categorically. Strangers leaves room for direct sequels, so we’ll see how that goes.

Therapist series: The Ballad of the Bardbarian, Therapist book 8, is with beta readers now (and I’m editing it again, because…that’s how I roll). I hope to have that out by the end of October. After that / alongside the Strangers edits, I am outlining another novella about the Dread Army. Because they’re fun.

Other/Meta: Somewhere between Bardbarian and Strangers, I hope to start up a “proper” newsletter for Healers, which means extra short stories and so on. There’s a lot of start-up work that goes into that (y’know…writing those stories, or recipes, or whatever), so it’s a project of its own.

Beta reading status: If you’re interested in beta reading any time in the future (for either series) or have a trade I might be able to help with, feel free to contact me. wheel.of.a.different.color@gmail.com or u/ofthecageandaquarium on Reddit. Let me know which series you’re up for.

When, eventually, I get to the point where I have something ready, there’s no obligation whatsoever. This is more of an “open to being asked” list.

The Ballad of the Bardbarian (Therapist 8) is open for beta reading now, as long as you’re OK with finishing up by mid-October. (It’s a shortish novel at about 60k words.) I am open to beta readers who haven’t read the rest of the series, because I hope this one can be jumped into cold.

Trades: I don’t always have time or energy to properly devote to beta reading for other people, and I’m trying to be more honest with myself about that. But when the stars align, I love to beta read. I have opinions, and I can usually verbalize them! And I like paying it forward, so I don’t charge for beta reading. However:

  • I don’t specialize in one genre, which is a drawback: for instance, I cannot tell you if a story works as a cozy fantasy, as a romance, etc. I can tell you if I, personally, liked or disliked various aspects of a story, and why.
  • Unless you tell me otherwise, I will tell you if I don’t like aspects of your story or if I’m confused, bored, or irritated by a plotline/scene/character. I will try to be nice about it, but please: really, truly, deeply think about whether you want to hear that. It has caused problems before. If you want positive vibes only, please state that up front.
  • I don’t do sexual assault, tons of violence, middle-grade or children’s lit. I support your freedom to write about those things; I just don’t like reading them. (Yes, I read middle grade on occasion for my own reading, ex. Chrestomanci. I’ve found that I am not useful at all with beta reading it, though.)

Thanks!

Oh why not, ~cover reveal~

Therapist in Another World Series

I’m not good at hype, but I think this cover is fun, and I’d like to give it a little spotlight. Also, at thumbnail size we will probably miss the snow, which is a shame. This book is peak Winter Vibes.

Book cover: The Ballad of the Bardbarian, How I Became a Therapist in Another World book 8.
The title character faces front, playing a lute; the antagonist, a man in an ostentatious hat and orange cloak, looms behind him.

The artist is the same as for book 7, Yirienkaki; I recommend their work heartily. Fast work [faster than I could finish the book, actually], comes up with good ideas for staging and posing, and the results look great.

(I did the titles this time. Don’t blame the artist.)

One more round of edits if all goes well. Fingers crossed.

Whew.

The Strangers' Crossroads (Healersverse)

Despite the best efforts of this fever I always run after I get booster shots, the first draft of The Strangers’ Crossroads is done. 152,000 words, holy crap that’s too long. I hope to get it down to 125k by the time it’s released.

Next, I’m going to set this aside and do my last rounds of edits for Ballad of the Bardbarian, including incorporating any stuff that comes up in the beta reading phase. Once that’s out, I’ve got a whole to-do list for the first edits to Strangers, including sketching maps and floor plans (for continuity as well as ??inclusion in the final??) and some dire wordcount cuts.

But for now, we’ve gotten through the story. <3 This one was a long time coming, and it has a while to go yet. But I’m glad we made it this far.

I’m not even sure The Strangers’ Crossroads is going to be the final title, but to celebrate, here’s a song that won’t leave my head for obvious reasons.

“Strangers”, Langhorne Smith & the Law (audio only)

Grab bag of sausage-making

The Process, The Strangers' Crossroads (Healersverse)
Photo of a spiral notebook with a nearly unreadable scrawl, detailing an 11-day travel itinerary.

This was actually helpful at the time, but looking back at it the next day, I was struck by how ridiculously primitive it is. You know actual authors use specialized software to construct their intricate and airtight timelines, right?

(I have had horrible handwriting since I was a child. This is particularly bad, as it was quickly jotted down. “Res Fest” = Feast of the Resurrection of Darano, yes, we have another guilt-ridden Daranite on our hands, get ready; Rola = short for a town name; 5/5 – 6/21 is the timeframe this section of the book takes place in, between RoD and Summer Solstice. A character was originally going to travel between two towns by a slow method that took 5 days each way, and then secures one that only takes two days. So I had to get the original / actual itineraries right.)

It’s alarming to me that somehow we ended up with a Third Act Road Trip again. One where the MC meets his partner’s family for the first time, which we’ve also done before! But hey. I’m enjoying this one. It’s running long, but that’s what editing is for.

…and I did sign up for Cozy the Day Away this fall, for Healers’ Road, under “Cozy-Adjacent.” I still don’t know what that term means to other people, but I think it’s appropriate. The sale this time is slated to be huge, and scheduled on the heels of a cozy fantasy con – so I’m sure they will have a great time with it.

The actual sale is Oct. 14, but I add padding around it on my sale dates so I’m not late. THR will be 0.99 / local equivalent in ebook, and I’ll see how low I can get the paperback too. (Probably just a dollar or two lower. Print costs are a big factor.)

An Amazon-data-mining software I use called Publisher Rocket just added another feature: reverse search, or seeing which search terms will turn up a given book. Between this and my foray into Amazon ads, I’m finding that the algorithm doesn’t turn up any of my books for much of anything. Their literal titles, my pen names, basic searches that contain their literal titles (“healer fantasy”). Meaning that people aren’t going to find it by searching, ex., “fantasy with strong female lead” (which no one’s searching, pretty much; just an example). They’re only going to find it if they already know what it is and look for it specifically.

This is… illuminating and discouraging all at once. It makes me think that I should stop bothering with ads and just focus on word of mouth, which is a completely unpredictable force. But I’ll take any excuse to have one less thing to worry about!

The other thing about the reverse search is that you’re unofficially supposed to use it to spy: you look up other people’s books and steal their keywords. But the thing is, a) I feel gross about doing that, and b) other people’s keywords aren’t necessarily relevant to my book. We’re back to comps again: finding other books that are the-same-but-different to mine. Which has been a problem since day one.

As for Therapist, I found that nobody* wants feminist isekai, which was both unsurprising and kind of funny to see in black and white. (Listed at an average of $3 income per month. Which suggests I am the only person on the entirety of Amazon who’s writing it. lolsob) I took out that keyword. I mean, it’s still true, but it’s not helping anything to include it.

*”nobody” colloquially. The software bottoms out at “less than 100 searches per month.”

And look, I’m not slagging the reader base for what they do want to read. Life’s too short to be a snob. Let a million harem litRPG whatevers bloom. I’m just not going to be the one writing them, unfortunately for my bank account.

Hooray, it’s Small Tasks Day

Therapist in Another World Series

Decided to use my day off to tackle some long-standing formatting tasks. They’re all Therapist-related, because Healers is holding the course until the (increasingly complicated) cover situation resolves. Here we go.

  • The vol. 1-4 omnibus is coming back in print!
  • The omnibus now has content warnings in both formats.
  • The ebook covers of Vol. 1-7 and the omnibus are now a standardized size. That was an unprofessional mistake on my part that was annoying the hell out of me.
  • If all goes well, the Therapist series will include a timeline graphic on its listing pages. It will also be added to the Extras page on this site.
  • Dipping into inside baseball for a moment, both series now have ads running on Amazon in the US. I’d thought about waiting until the Healers cover was updated, but I decided to run them in the meantime to try to learn how the system works. (I’d previously run one on Healers for a minute, freaked out when I got a few dozen impressions without any clicks, then learned that that’s pretty normal — apparently a “good” situation is when 0.3% of the people who see your ad click it. Wild. So I’m trying again.)

The current goal otherwise is to continue full-steam-ahead on Strangers. The thought of a newsletter extra for Healers is still nagging the back of my mind, so as soon as Strangers reaches the end of its first draft, we may finally be able to move ahead on a full-fledged newsletter.

Roundup of interesting and cranky things

as a reader

This podcast episode (part one of two) about Thomas Kinkade was a hell of a listen this week. Like a lot of middle-class(ish) Americans who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, this art was omnipresent in the atmosphere for a large chunk of my life. And as an enthusiast of jigsaw puzzles and embroidery, let me tell you, this aesthetic is still inescapable in certain quarters.

But inadvertently, these episodes also illuminated (ha) for me how I feel about other forms of art built to be technically skilled, hearken to a mythical small-town past, and avoid any hint of complexity lest it make anyone uncomfortable for a split second.

That kind of art makes a lot of people feel warm and fuzzy and uplifted, and that’s great for them. I hope they enjoy it. They don’t have that effect on me, though. Maybe I’m just a broken human being; I don’t deny that. But it was gratifying to me to hear that someone else out there is left cold by the sort of thing that’s supposedly universally appealing.

I’m not going to be a snob about it — if you love that kind of art, in any medium, I love that for you. But they don’t hit me the way they’re intended to hit their target audience. So I guess I’m just not in their target audience.

Some threads with interesting book recs:

Books with ace/allo romance : r/LGBTBooks (reddit.com)
It must be Yell About How Great At the Feet of the Sun Is o’clock again, how time flies.

Looking for ace/aro protagonist : r/LGBTBooks (reddit.com)
A shorter list, but one with some good references.

(Am I dealing with guilt over having an aspec antagonist in my next story? Obviously, yes. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.)

Book Catch-up: I Don’t Know What Cozy Is, plus chainsaws

as a reader

As of this morning, I’ve finally finished all the books I bought during the first Cozy the Day Away Sale in April. Yeah, four months ago. I bought about 30 books, I’m a slow reader, and I jumped in and out of the list as well as other unrelated books. But now we’re done!

And I have even less idea of what “cozy” is than I did when I started. Well, that’s useful information in itself. I’d hoped to learn, and I did; just not what I expected to learn.

More books: I am apparently simultaneously a 14 year old boy and a 45 year old woman with two kids

Powers: Organizing useless information

anime nerd corner, Therapist in Another World Series

Short update:

  • Shuffled around some of the pages in the Therapist section to organize them in an “Extras” section, and finally added a character list for that series. (Eventually I’d like to do the same for Healers, but that’s a longer list, and I’d like to focus on finishing Strangers first.)
  • Got the art for the Bardbarian cover, and I am super stoked!
  • Anime nerd corner: Senpai is an Otokonoko is so goddamn cute, people, I can’t handle it. The “dolphin vs. whale” metaphor hit me directly in my gray-ace heart, even though I think they were aiming for aromantic. That’s fine. I can vibe with it while knowing it isn’t made “for” me.
  • I’m pursuing other options for a full re-cover of the Healers series. I have been working with an artist on art for book 1, but I’m not sure it’s going to work out. If it does, that will be a happy bonus that we’ll use as promotional art.