Monthly Archives: August 2022

Moving parts, continued

games nerd corner, The Healers' Purpose (Book 3)

The release post is now stickied, so I can keep posting about follow-up without feeling like I’m burying the announcement.

Also, I forgot to include this song, which has been stuck in my head intermittently through this process. [They Might Be Giants, “Number Three”]

The print version is now live on Amazon. I’m about to send my first email to the mailing list, which I find very daunting despite the fact that these folks specifically signed up for updates. Impostor syndrome 101, right there.

After that, it seems like the only loose thread is Goodreads; I don’t think it has populated there yet. I have found and bookmarked the instructions for requesting an addition, but I’ll wait a little while before going that route.

[EDIT: As soon as I posted this, I saw that Goodreads has populated book 3. All right! Updating link lists now.]

Non-book stuff: vacations and exergames

Book 3 is out!

The Healers' Purpose (Book 3)

After fixing the link to the cover artist credit, we are now good to go on Gumroad and Amazon. Nook and Kobo are processing now, and should be ready within the next couple of days.

Amazon US / UK / CA / AU – ebook and print [as of 8/15]
Gumroad – ebook (EPUB, MOBI or PDF)

Summary:

When the Academy sends a new batch of healers into the field, Agna finds herself in an unexpected position of authority, on top of managing her new art gallery. She jumps at the chance to prove that she deserved to escape her father’s shadow. As her colleagues begin to fall victim to an unexplained loss of healing power, it starts to seem like too much for one healer to handle alone.

Keifon’s new life seems like more than he’d dared to wish for: friends, security, a chance to advance his career as a doctor. He has also confessed his feelings to his dearest friend, or so he thinks. But while he waits for her reply, his life continues on a path he never foresaw, and he begins to find new sides to his calling.

The city takes in its new transplants and offers opportunities, but not without a cost. Now that the friends — or perhaps partners — have found a place for themselves, they may find themselves doubting their direction.

Content notes here.

Whew. Feels strange that this story exists in the world after all this time. I don’t expect anyone to remember parts one and two. And that’s okay. I’m a different person than I was when I wrote book one. But I wanted to see this through, and I really do like the finished product.

Print layout next. I hope by jumping directly into it, I won’t start procrastinating… And this time, I’ll make notes for myself about what I’m doing so that it will be easier next time.

Update, Tuesday 8/9 [the timestamps are perpetually a day ahead of me, for some reason]: Print layout done, proof ordered. Nook and Kobo are ready to go.

Barnes & Noble / Nook – ebook
Rakuten Kobo – ebook

Considering the print proof needs to be, well, printed and then mailed, everything will hopefully be sewn up by next week. At that point I guess I’ll bother the mailing list.

It’s funny: the print version sells about a tenth as many copies as the ebook version, and add into that the drop-off between books 1 and 2 – I don’t expect to sell many print versions of book 3. Still, I just want to make that option available in case anyone wants it. It feels rude not to, since I know I’m capable of doing it. Why not, you know?

(I’m not complaining about the drop-off, by the way; if someone had a decent enough time with book 1 and then stopped, I still feel like my job here is done. Book 1’s ending is extremely not a cliffhanger, either. Ha.)

Update, Monday 8/15: Print verson is available at Amazon now.

We’re goin’ in.

Recs, The Healers' Purpose (Book 3)

As soon as my creaky desktop decides to cooperate, I’ll start formatting Book 3 for the digital/ebook release. I do plan to release it on paper, but formatting for print is a separate process, and I’m much rustier with it. So it’ll be ebook first, within the next two weeks if all goes well; paper after that sometime.

For the first time, one of my anime-related rambles relates to my hashtag-content: we’re trying out the currently airing Parallel World Pharmacy. I don’t hate it yet! Hooray! It’s not my favorite this year, but it hasn’t fucked up monumentally yet (as of episode 5), which is extremely high praise for an isekai series.

There’s even a scene in the most recent episode where a side character, who is opening a store, intentionally hires women who have been forced out of their past careers because they had kids. Let me tell you that given the current state of isekai anime, this is some kind of burn-it-all-down ~radical rhetoric~.

Heh.

One worrisome bit: it was weird to me that there was such a focus on cosmetic bloodletting, because bloodletting used to be seen as the cure to basically all ills. This series acts like it was a cosmetic procedure that women took to look whiter. Y’all, they stuck leeches on you for basically any reason. Got the flu? Too much blood. Depressed? Too much blood. I’m oversimplifying, BUT. Not by much.

Maybe that’s a difference between Japanese medical history and Western. I don’t know. I don’t have time right now to fall down a rabbit hole of bloodletting in Japan, because I’ve got a book to format. It’s just the first side-eye I’ve given this series so far.

(Side note to the side note, though, Spice and Wolf covers humorism amusingly — no pun intended — in a scene where one character smugly mansplains the theory to a character who’s never heard of it. A+.)

OK, the computer caught up with itself. Here we go.