Empath Release!

About the Book

Lauren Dailey is in break-up hell.

Stuck between moving on and letting go, she puts on a brave face while crying herself to sleep at night. But when a mysterious voice promises escape from her sadness, she is suddenly transported to a new world. And in this place, the slightest touch pulls her out of her tortured emotions into the mind of another - an empath.

The villagers - sweet Aerona and her mischievous twins, wise Siors, and hunky Cefin - welcome her and the blessings her empath powers bring. But this world is not without its dangers. The Anghenfil, a fire-breathing monster, has haunted the village for decades, and has a taste for empaths. And that mysterious voice promising escape from sadness? It's sounding more like a whisper tinged with smoke and embers.

Sneak Peek 

"There," Cefin said, pointing to a pile of rocks that leaned against the side of the mountain. "That is where I found you."

"I was under there?" Lauren breathed. It was obviously a cave-in, and the boulders were thick and heavy. If any of them had fallen in the wrong place, she would have been crushed.

It was a miracle she wasn't crushed.

She approached the pile and saw where Cefin must have dug her out. Seeing the size of the rocks, knowing how close she had come to not getting out, she felt a little sorry for being so angry with him. Although he was being an jerk right now, she wasn't sure she ever thanked him for saving her life.

"Hey," Lauren said, tossing him a sideways glance. "Thanks for saving me."

"Just hurry up," he huffed, pulling his spear off of his back. "The Anghenfil could be in any one of these caves."

"The right response is 'you're welcome'…" She walked up to the pile and began pushing aside any of the rocks she could, looking for anything strange. She tossed a fist-sized stone behind her and gasped.

"There's a cave here!" she called to Cefin, who was standing with his spear in his hand and not helping her whatsoever.

She sniffed and began tugging at a big rock, hoping that if she could move it a little bit, it would dislodge other ones, creating a larger hole, one that she could slip through. With a heave, she pushed with all of her might and it broke free, tumbling down into the blackness and taking Lauren with it.

She landed in a heap in the dark, cool cave, coughing up dust and other particles. A small halo of light formed a circle on the ground, but didn't offer any other illumination in the cave. Pushing herself to her feet, she walked over to the hole and peered out, spying Cefin standing at attention.

"I'm fine, thanks for asking."

"Hurry up," Cefin snapped, his eyes glued to the skies.

"Yeah, yeah," Lauren rolled her eyes, disappearing into the darkness.

She stumbled around for a moment, feeling at the floor with her feet for anything that would give her a clue as to how she got here. Maybe she just needed to walk to the end of the cave and she'd wake up back in her own bed. She kicked the ground until she found the wall of the cave, placing her hands on the chilly stone to guide her. She kept to the wall, planting her feet firmly with every step to keep her balance.

Her foot caught on something and she fell, but not onto the hard ground, onto something firm…

And scaly.

In the darkness, a gigantic red eye opened.

She gasped, fear gripping her as she scrambled for the small pinhole in the distance that was the edge of the cave. "CEFIN!" she screamed, her voice echoing in the cave.

The monster was moving, and Lauren saw a flash of bright fire, illuminating the black body the size of an elephant.

She screamed and ran faster, hating herself for ever coming up here. She flung herself at the small hole, wriggling out as fast as she could. Cefin's spear was out, concern on his face.

"Lauren, quiet down, you'll wake the—"

"TOO LATE!" she screamed, pulling herself out of the cave and running past him as fast as her feet could carry her. "RUN!"

About the Author

S. Usher Evans is an author, blogger, and witty banter aficionado. Born in a small, suburban town in northwest Florida, she was seventeen before she realized that not all beach sand is white. From a young age, she has always been a long-winded individual, first verbally (to the chagrin of her ever-loving parents) and then eventually channeled into the many novels that dotted her Windows 98 computer in the early 2000s. After high school, she got the hell outta dodge and went to school near the nation's capital, where she somehow landed jobs at National Geographic, Discovery Channel, and the British Broadcasting Corporation, capping off her educational career with delivering the commencement address to 20,000 of her closest friends. She determined she'd goofed off long enough with that television nonsense and got a "real job" as an IT consultant. Yet she continued to write, developing 20 page standard operating procedures and then coming home to write novels about bounty hunters, teenage magic users, and other nonsense. After a severe quarter life crisis at age twenty-seven, she decided to finally get a move on and share those novels with the world in hopes that she will never have to write another SOP again.

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Alliances is Released!

(all gifs are from my new obsession - the unbreakable kimmie schmidt)

ALLIANCES IS FINALLY OUT!

 GO BUY IT ON AMAZON!

Things that make me happy

---WARNING: MAJOR BRAGGING POST AHEAD---

---PROCEED WITH CAUTION---

*Contented sigh*

Things are going pretty damn amazing right now. 

I posted this on Twitter yesterday, but I wanted to share some incredible stats:

Book Release Hot Wash

So, I published a book last week...

Yeah, I know I'm super late blogging about it. One should probably write a blog on the date of such an important event. But, to be honest, I didn't quite know what I was going to want to write until it happened. Then it was a busy weekend marketing and all that, then it was Father's Day (apparently, I made my daddy cry, which is no easy feat #rightinthefeels).

First of all, thank you to the ~50 folks who've bought my book so far. Per the latest stats from le Amazon and le SmashWords, I'm looking at about 24 online purchases (mostly ebooks). The rest of the books I've sold from the copies I ordered directly from CreateSpace. I've still got about 20 or so in my car to sell, which means I might actually make a bit of profit this go'round. (Yeah, it's not a lot. But it's a looooooong game.)

Second, thank you to the folks who have cracked it open so far, and I know at least one of you has finished it already (besides my amazing beta readers who are incredible). Thanks for going on a journey with me and Lyssa; hope you enjoy it :) (And, you know, I'd LOVE it if you'd leave me a review on GoodReads or Amazon or whatever...but no pressure).

Okay, so the thank yous are out of the way. But how was my birthday/release day?

Amazing, incredible. I've been feeling lonely lately, whining to myself and all that. Needless to say, I definitely ate a lot of crow on Thursday. I felt all kinds of loved and appreciated from people near and far.

I got a bunch of facebook well wishes (responded by book!spam, but c'est la vie)

I got the best lunch ever from Wegmans

I got cupcakes from my fun runners

I got unexpected gifts from my best friend in the mail

Lastly, a bunch of people bought my book, which was the best birthday present ever.

In other news, I wanted to share the results of my GoodReads giveaway. I had over 700 people enter to get my book.

SEVEN HUNDRED.

Not only that, but over 300 people have added my book to their "to-read" queue. I know that many of those folks have over 1,000 books in that queue and may never get around to my book, but still. Wow.

700 people know I exist!!

I'm waiting to get approval for yet another giveaway - this time 3 books/2 week time period. The giveaway itself is actually kind of expensive (the $10 cost me ~$100 to produce and ship to contest winners), but I can't argue with that kind of exposure. So far, it's the best investment I've made.

I've also got a Facebook Ad running, which, last time resulted in a 100% increase in fans. Since Thursday at midnight, total fans have grown by 13%, but the total number of books sold has been pretty stagnant since Thursday. Once new fans = new sales, then I'll celebrate.

I'm planning on doing some more giveaways and free book days over the next few weeks. But you know, I'd *love* it you'd actually pony up the $4 instead of waiting for the free giveaway ;)

Which you can purchase here: http://www.susherevans.com/book-info

Mortified

I have had a mega-major spelling error in my book description. You know, the one I've been using to try and sell my book. The description that I use to get people to say, "Hey, she writes good!"

At the very end, there's a line that goes like this:

"She's ready to finally rid herself of the life, past, and fate of Lyssa Peate - until her intern, now aware of her secret, demands that she fulfill the obligations of her internship, lest he spill the truth about her double life"

Yeah, except instead of "Past," I had "Paste."

PASTE.

WHAT THE HELL EVANS.

(I also misspelled thieves earlier in the synopsis, but that's less glaring than PASTE.)

Hi, I'm S. Usher Evans. And I write good. Please buy my book.

/fail

Pre-Orders, Publication Dates, and Physical Books, Oh My!

I know I've bombarded you with a lot of stuff lately, friends. Appreciate you suffering through my initial forays into the self-publishing market. 

Here's where we stand on everything:

1. The actual, entire book is still on track to be published on June 12th. (More on that below).

2. If you have an iTunes account, you can pre-order the book right at this very second using the below link:

​ ​

On June 12th, the book will be automatically downloaded and added to all of your devices for your reading enjoyment. ;)

(Also, if you do read the books, appreciate it if you would leave a review and a rating on the book itself.) 

3. If you would like to pre-order on Barnes and Noble (EDIT: PREORDER ON BARNES AND NOBLE HERE!)or Kobo, it's coming, I promise. I'm not sure what the hold up is on B&N, but I know there's a backlog of a couple weeks on Kobo (anybody use this service anyways?). As soon as the Nook version is available, I shall let you know. With considerable fanfare, I'm sure.

In the meantime, if you want to download the preview for your Nook, here you go: ​Nook ​Sample 

4. If you are a Kindle User (which I see a lot of you are, based on the results of the contest), Amazon does not enjoy playing with Smashwords, which is my chosen distributor. In fact, unless I upload myself or sell 1,000 copies of the book, Smashwords will not distribute to Amazon. Fear not, I will make sure you guys get your copy in June - either by uploading it myself (most likely) or by selling the 1,000 books necessary to join the Amazon-Smashwords club (wanted, but we'll see).

In the meantime, you can download the preview for your Kindle: Kindle Sample

So a bit more on my decision to do pre-orders and wait until June 12th to publish: 

Preorders have long been a marketing tool used by big publishers to sell lots of books. The premise basically is that you can build up weeks worth of sales and marketing efforts that will all take effect on the same day. So instead of a slow growth in regular orders, I have 8 weeks of activity. Ideally, this should bump my book up on the bestseller lists (A girl can dream, can't she?). 

iBooks is actually really cool about supporting indie authors, so there's a chance if I get a lot of pre-orders, they will pick it up and market it as well. So if I seem a bit...pushy...with the pre-orders, that's why. Y'all know I'm hoping to make a drastic career change, and this is how we do it.

The other thing I noticed from my (still on-going) contest is a lot of folks still like the paper and ink versions. Well up until yesterday, I thought that was kind of impossible. 

It's actually not - although it will have to be performed slowly. 

The deal is that, using the Amazon company CreateSpace, I can actually have my book printed and made available on Amazon.com (and also they will distribute to Kindle, which is nice). If I sell it on Amazon, I get ~$1.69/book. If I have a bunch of copies shipped to me, I actually can get ~$5.00 per book if I sell them myself. 

So what does that mean?

Right now, I'm just toying with the idea of doing this. Obviously, my marketing strategy is to have the books available in every single market I can to reach the maximum amount of audiences. E-books are more profitable for me (I get $2.60-$3.10 per book sold) than if you buy the physical copy off of Amazon.com, but having physical copies to sell would allow me to do more in-person marketing (book readings, libraries, book stores, etc). I can buy 100 books for ~$550 and sell them myself for $10.99 (or less, I dunno). I might wait and see if I can use the eBook profits to support the physical copy purchase before I make any decisions.

Because while I totes want to have my own words in my hands, I don't want 99 copies of them.

(Important to note: If you purchase an eBook and want a physical copy, I will absolutely give you a discount equal to the price of the eBook. I might even put my John Hancock on it, for whatever that's worth)

I bet you're wondering why I screamed just then. Well friends, good news: 

OH MY GOD I UPLOADED MY BOOK TO SMASHWORDS.

Hold off on downloading it juuuust yet - it's going through the Smashwords review process right now. I'm a little concerned about my formatting, I have a lot of images that I had to fix. But here's hoping that they accept it just as it is. And then it goes into the premium catalog.

Holy shit.

Holy shit. holy shit. holy shit. holy shit.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH THIS IS HAPPENING REALLY!

Look at my cover letter. LOOK AT IT!

So remember like a year (read: a month) ago when I said I was going to submit my book to a real publisher, then you never heard anything else about it?

Yeah, that's cause I kind of dropped the ball on that one.

But ball has been picked up! I'm furiously working on my cover letter, synopsis, and, as soon as I get my edits back from my amazing editor, Bexter, I will be able to ship off the entire package to the publisher behind door #1: Tor/Forge

I've submitted to these bubbas before, way back when I was a wee ickle thing in college, which was nearly 10 YEARS AGO (*ded*). Razia as a novel has matured incredibly - as I have matured incredibly since 19-20 years old. But I actually feel really, really strongly that things are actually starting to fall into place. Namely because my cover letter just...spoke to me.

Here it is, as it stands right now:

Dear Publisher Person (I have a real header, but don't want to paste it here)

We are all living double lives – some as secret novel-writers, others as secret space-pirate bounty hunters. Dr. Lyssa Peate is the latter – by “day,” a scientist charged with discovering and selling distant planets, by “night,” a bounty hunter playing a fast-paced and deeply competitive piracy game. She would love nothing more than to leave behind the name, past, and fate of Lyssa Peate in favor of the strong and stoic Razia; unfortunately, she’s kind of having a hard time doing that right now. For all of her spunk, analytical brain, and drive to be the best, she’s still a girl. And “girls aren’t pirates.”

Double Life is the first of a five book series, a completed 78,000 word novel in the science fiction/young adult genre. Much like the Hunger Games and Divergent series, it features a strong female lead, resonating with the Sheryl Sandberg-led girls of the #banbossy generation. Like the Harry Potter series, the pirate world is complex and detailed, tied together with a Facebook-like pirate intraweb, where the latest dastardly deeds are broadcast like status updates. Razia locates her quarry by pouring over tables of financial transaction history, where hidden pirate names littered in the search results like Easter eggs. Smart readers will be able to play bounty hunter, pouring over the book to see if they can find bounties themselves. The first book of the series will be published via Smashwords (independent publisher) in June 2014.

As an author and media professional, my experience encompasses both Department of Defense strategic communications, as well as television production (including a stint at the BBC). Even before publication, I have already laid the groundwork for an effective media campaign, incorporating Facebook, Twitter, and blog posts to engage my audience. The communications strategy will shift once the book is available for publication, offering incentives for sharing content and driving traffic to the different outlets. More involved communication – including events at comic book conventions, media interviews, and even a J.K. Rowling-type engaging website where users can engage in pirate games – could be part of the strategy as more books are published.

Thank you for your consideration,

S. Usher Evans

Would you keep reading?

I also have my synopsis, but I can't post that here 'cause it has SPOOOOOILERSSSSS, obvs. 'cause it's about the whole book. I am having issues with it, because, obvs. it's a 78k word book, and it's really hard to condense that into 3-10 pages. I'm trying to figure out which small details to add, which to take out - finding, as usual, that small details early in the book have big impacts later in the story. Right now, I'm smack in the middle of about 6 pages total, but I'm just worried that it's not detailed enough, and doesn't get to the heart of the book I'm trying to sell.

Speaking of amazing people five paragraphs ago, I got my first feedback from one of my 3 editors. The following is some choice feedback from her:

"I'm enjoying myself immensely"

"It's so much FUN"

"I'm very interested in what happens next"

"I've found a few typos and one inconsistency." Whoops, I mean, my writing is totes perfect all the time no problems here. ;)

I about peed myself with joy.

If one person likes it, then others will as well. I'm not smoking crack here, which is always my #1 worry with my writing. I know I have fun, all alone in my house, reading and re-reading my work, but I never know if anyone else will share my joy.

Speaking of joy - I am making my book available for pre-order in 1 month and 1 day. Which means that I will be an official published novelist in 2 months and 1 day.

Holy shit.

 

What the hell am I supposed to do now?

So my book got shipped off to my fantastic "editors" (also known as close friends who offered to read it and give opinions).

And now....I guess I have to do all of that stuff I've been putting off since I got really focused on the book?

I took out my garbage(s) and worked on my grad school paper. Went for a (shitty) run. Yet, I am still anxiously waiting word from my three readers as to their opinions of the book..

I want you to know, three people who have my manuscript in their inboxes, that I am resisting the urge to pester you every three seconds with asking if you've read it yet. I know you have lives and you are doing a big favor, so I'm not going to pester you about it. If you get to it, you get to it. If you don't, you don't.

But....

...

Did you start reading it yet?

I always go through this writing hangover period after I finish a project. I've been so focused on it for weeks and weeks and weeks, and now I've got energy and nothing to do with it. Sure, I could work on Book 2, and have, buttttttttt....

I'm so anxious about what they think. And I'm starting to panic that I fail as a writer and I will never be able to quit my job and become a novelist full time and....blargh. 

Yeah, I know. Sorry for the spazoid post.

Hello....!

Hi friends - both imaginary and real. Thanks for stopping by!

For those of you who don't know me, my name is S. Usher Evans, and I am an author of many novel series. Most of which remain firmly fixed in the ol' noggin, but slowly but surely, they are being leaked out onto my iPad for mostly my enjoyment. But, after reading them over and over, I kind of feel like they're pretty good. Thus, I've decided to publish some of them for (hopefully) your enjoyment :)

The first book to be published is the first of a 4 (maybe 5 or 6) book series about a fun girl named Razia - or Lyssa, depending on where she is. Razia wants to be the best bounty hunter in the universe. The only problem is that nobody will give her a break, and she's relegated to capturing petty purse snatchers and other peons. To make ends meet, she works in the "family" profession as a Deep Space Explorer. As if that wasn't bad enough, she's also trying to keep two steps ahead of her slimy boss, Dr. Pymus, who's interested in getting his hands on the work of her disappeared father's work on Leveman's Vortex, a gargantuan black hole thought to be the home of a divine "Great Creator."

 

The delicate balance between her two worlds is upended when Dr. Pymus forces her to take on an intern. This intern, her younger brother Vel, becomes an asset when a case of mistaken identity causes the police to think Razia the pirate has taken a hostage. Lauded by the pirates by this, Razia is finally given the leeway to hunt freely...except that Vel shows up, demanding that she fulfill the obligations of her internship. Unable to shake him, Vel joins Lyssa as she maneuvers the complicated underworld of space piracy while still trying to keep ahead of Dr. Pymus, and all the while trying to escape the shadow of her father's work.

...

Sounds like a fun time, right?

 

Okay, so maybe you need to read it. Which you will be able to on.....

 

June 12th.

 

Yep, June 12th. Barring any surprises from Smashwords, Book 1 of the Razia series will be available in your favorite e-bookstore (iTunes, Amazon, Barnes and Noble). If this great experiment works, maybe you could get a physical copy.

 

What am I hoping to gain from this experiment? Not much. I'm doing this more to say that I did it than to become J.K. Rowling. But you know, a nice house in Scotland would be nice.

 

So what can you expect from me here on out? Depending on interest, maybe some excerpts from the book, maybe some social media contests, maybe nothing. Completely up to you, my imaginary friends. The fact that I have publicly announced the fact that I am a writer to people I actually know is a huge first step for me. Not to get all squishy on you or anything....

 

 

 

And on that note, stay tuned, friends :)