Greetings, fellow humans. I’m Caroline and I write fantasy and horror—my debut epic fantasy novel, The Obsidian Druid was released in April 2024. I also have a mild obsession with Web 1.0-era websites. This is my newsletter.
The High Lord Must Fall
The Obsidian Druid, book one of The Age of Aikana, is now available in ebook and paperback worldwide. It’s taken almost ten years, so many edits I’ve lost count, multiple Pinterest mood boards, thousands of cups of coffee, and hundreds of glasses of wine (probably), but my precious book baby is finally published!
I know many of my subscribers downloaded a review copy of the book, and for that I thank you. I hope you’re enjoying it, and if you feel so inclined, please don’t forget to review it on Amazon. Reviews really help books to reach their audience, plus reviewing makes you an even more awesome human than you already are (you subscribe to my newsletter, so have automatically achieved a base level of awesome).
If you missed out on the advanced reader copies, you can currently buy the ebook for just $1.99 (scandalous, I know).
(US): www.amazon.com/dp/B0CTD1GXKC
(UK): www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CTD1GXKC
(Au): www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0CTD1GXKC
In Other News…
Marketing my book has been every bit as difficult as the prophets forewarned (and by prophets, I mean the self-publishing subreddit I’ve been lurking in for the best part of a year). I’ve enjoyed many parts of this indie author gig. I like being in charge of my own publishing schedule, and having ultimate control of cover and layout design is surely some sort of drug. Marketing though, is tedious and frustrating. You can never be sure if the effort you’ve expended making multiple social media posts or begging review blogs to notice you is ultimately worth the time it takes away from actual writing. It’s a tricky balancing act, and people have been talking forever about how traditionally published authors are also required to do their own marketing. Whichever route to publishing you take, it seems there’s just no escape from the dreaded hard sell and the slightly icky feeling doing that can give you.
I might go into the steps I’ve taken and the marketing experiments I’ve tried in a future newsletter, so if you’re into that sort of thing, be sure to look out for it.
Current Favourite Website
Robin’s FYI - First Created 1997 - Last Updated 2013
In the before times, when internet speeds were slow and dial-up modems were noisy, intrepid net surfers may have experienced a conundrum that is best summed up by Robin’s FYI About page:
“FYI is a cross between a personal website, and a directory site or what some people would call a Web Guide. It is for people that are surfing for information, that don't have the time to surf through 1 million matches on a search engine, where 90% of the sites either don't truly match the subject you are looking for, or are dead links.”
Being a 600+ page site with over 6,000 links, the range of topics covered by Robin’s FYI is truly vast. There’s information about animals (Robin was obviously an early pioneer of the clickbait title, as evidenced by the marine life section: All Wet), Irish cream recipes, a list of items you’ll need for your first website (which has links to providers of counters and guestbooks—you can’t think of designing a website without those!), and detailed instructions on how to be a good Christmas elf.
This website reminds me of early Yahoo, when their links were still curated by humans and listed by topic. In 1999, Robin’s FYI was receiving 2 million unique visitors per year. If my website commanded those kinds of numbers, and if just a small percentage of those visitors went on to buy a book, I could probably afford to buy my family a modestly-sized house with a detached garage.
If you want to see the complete list of Web 1.0-era Websites of the Week, you can find it on my website.
Stalk me across the interwebs: Website - Dreamwidth - Bluesky - Read Stories Online
That’s it for now.
Congratulations! I just bought the Kindle book from Amazon. I have about 300 books on my TBR shelf and will move it much closer to the front of the line.
I picked up your book on Amazon and am adding to my read-pile. I’ll make sure you get a review one way or another, and if I can come up with some additional pointer or advice, I’ll post it in here, or DM, depending on what I have to say.