Geez, what’s with these month plus gaps in between blog posts, Mari? 

Sorry!

I’ve been recovering from my hospital stay, dealing with food poisoning and stomach flu nearly back to back to back, and dealing with mental illness processing as well. As one does. The good news is reading books is an amazing antidote to some of the above listed problems and I’ve been snapping up books by Ann Aguirre, (Sirantha Jax) Rachel Bach (Paradox Series,) Jim C. Hines Magic Ex Libris series, SL Huang’s Russell’s Attic series, the rest of the Legacy of Paksenarrion series by the beloved Elizabeth Moon, as well as rereading the first three Earth’s Children Books by Jean M. Auel. 

Aside from that, I’ve been playing Final Fantasy XIV a fair bit, and well, writing my own stuff. My High Fantasy With Sci-Fi elements novel The Crystalline Prisoner sits at about twenty-two thousand words, and I have a semi secret pure smut/ erotica collection of short stories I’m working on at about nine thousand words.

Other books I have finished first drafts for are the Tokyo Area Novel (Title TBD), and the first two books in my space opera trilogy. I also have vague ideas about a sequel to my erotic-tinged book Guns of Penance, but I need to sit down and think about that a minute with you, dear reader:

Guns of Penance sold about ~45-50 copies, which means I spent more on creating and self-publishing it than I earned. It received 4-5 4 star average reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Marketing, as I’ve said before, is the hard part of writing, comparatively. Even big publisher house authors need to be fairly marketing smart to peddle them books.

So I have a question for you dear reader: 

I’m pondering publishing my next book for free (ebook only,) and just leaving a donation tip jar on the download page where hey, if you liked it, you can toss a buck, euro, or yen my way. Is this a good idea, or should I stick to peddling it via amazon for $4 (13$ USD for paperback, they make $10 on the book) or what?

Please please please let me know in the comment section. 

Thank you!