Rebranded (and a Little Nostalgic)

Due to a confluence of events, yesterday was a bit of a wash for work, and I decided fuck it, I’ll start uploading all the Livi Talbot cover rebrands.

This meant remaking the eBook files, changing everything on here*, Payhip, D2D, and Kobo. I haven’t remade the audio files yet but that only affects what’s bought direct from me–the covers are changed everywhere. All of it was so much work but it’s my birthday soon and I’m taking two weeks off, so I don’t want admin stuff hanging over my head while I have to write Demon Fall’s finale (and, hopefully, affording some of my favourite appetizers–I’m trying to eat what’s in my freezer to make room for them, and keep eyeing my list lol).

My plan of approach for the past couple of years when I’d been considering re-designing them was to lean harder on the adventure look rather than UF, and the shorthand I and other women I know use when talking graphic design is “boy covers”. It doesn’t matter the genre–I’ve done “boy covers” for women’s SF books, contemporary books, fantasy books–and it doesn’t even mean the books are marketed to boys, but certain branding elements like large text, particular fonts, and other elements signal “this is not a girl book” because, unfortunately, among many women readers anything at this point with a women’s name and a female character now has the expectation of being genre Romance. There is, perhaps, some comfort to know it’s not just me but happening to a lot of writers, but UF is so conflated with PNR at this point that it’s an impossible expectation to shake and I have to step away from it entirely.**

I refuse to change my name or hide my gender, however this, at least, signals a different kind of book, and I won’t have people skipping and/or complaining about the action present in my action series.*** It’s too late to make much of a difference, the damage has been done to both the series and my brain, but I’m still hoping the rebrand will help the audiobooks. Which is to say, anticipating inevitable questions: no, the rebrand does not mean the last book is coming.

It’s unwritten. I haven’t touched it in two and a half years after writing maybe two or three thousand words on it.

I’d thought, originally, I would hold off on doing the rebrands until that book was written. But it’s been three years. Realistically, I am not going to suddenly pick up this book and write it. I’d hoped to last fall but due to circumstances being what the were, and the pressure I continue to feel, it did not happen and I am unlikely to have another opportunity in my lifetime to take a few months off to focus on researching and writing it.

But to give these audiobooks a chance to do well enough to justify crowdfunding a third (I will be shocked, honestly, if I even sell a half dozen of them), I have to put my best foot forward and a change seemed in order. The boxsets are updated too.

I haven’t done print yet because it’ll take a lot longer to redo the interiors and wraps.

What I did not expect, as I remade the files, was having my gaze snagging and rereading bits and…enjoying them. Or at least remembering that I enjoyed them.

I didn’t expect this because I had an actual panic attack last year when I tried to proofread Solomon’s Seal prior to sending to Everand–like I spun out, questioning whether I could give the money back, until a friend stepped in and proofed for me. It was bad.

But West’s dramatic arrival on Mount Penglai and just how much he loved her; Laurel being an absolute badass when she’s in her comfort zone; Iluka afraid he’ll have his heart broken but diving all-in anyway; Livi’s unraveling until she’s so plainly just a young traumatized woman who had to grow up too fast and doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing.

I loved them so much.

I had so much I wanted to do. Livi’s reluctant buddy-cop team-up with Jo Choi as they venture deep into North Korea in book 8; the shakeup in book 9 that changed everything and led to what was really happening with the Pulse and Pulse-born (it’s not what you, or any of the characters, thought); the big arc involving the woman with the Nostoi who was in the airport parking lot in Yampellec and who collapsed the tunnel in Charon (and who gave West the ultimatum if you read Tiger’s Memory). There were big battles and big emotions and big character growth and big reveals and such a great finale. Even the [redacted] in an Egyptian tomb in that seventh book with so much angst.

I knew I loved them but I forgot what it felt like when I loved them, if that makes sense.

Under the adventure and the action and the magic window dressing, was always a part of my heart and my soul–a woman grappling with trauma and violence and violation and trying to be whole again. I loved it and I miss it.

My hope at this point is just to reach a place where I can accept that they’re in the world even if it killed my love for them instead of regretting it like I usually do, and remember to protect myself from it happening again. But I’m presently watching a friend go through the same thing with a series only ten times worse because she has such a bigger audience–just scores and scores of people who did not check the genre of what they were reading and do not seem to even read the text screaming endlessly at her. And to what end? Why? What purpose does it serve?

Do people not have enough to read out there that they have to send hatemail when they don’t like how a story went? Does anyone ever take responsibility and think “Oh, my bad, I guess this isn’t what I thought it was” instead of demanding to speak to the manager? Is this the ultimate result of treating art like interchangeable content built to suit the consumer for so long?

I have no idea but I am angry.

Say what you want about the right-wing lunatics constantly trashing Dweller but at least they don’t venture over to my inbox to tell me.

Friend, at least, has decided she doesn’t care anymore and is just trudging on; few people have my tendency to take their toys and go home, and the world is better for it, I think. Me, I still cannot even think of that seventh book without simultaneously hearing every terrible thing anyone said to or about me, every person who hate-read and complained endlessly, and predicting exactly what complaint will come from every single story choice I make.

I know several women writers now who are trying to craft their schedules around drafting entire series books back to back so they won’t have those voices in their heads while writing pivotal scenes (like I’m trying to do with Waverly) or holding on to books ready to publish, even to their financial detriment, to avoid having people screaming at them for releasing a new book other than the series one they want.

This is the state of independent publishing as a woman, apparently.

Anyway, tech issues were finally sorted and Dweller is officially out in the world. I am truly thrilled by the people with auditory processing disorders like me who still picked it up because of how great Hannah Church’s “Fuck you, Greg” line delivery is. 🥰

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* I have also redone the top of the homepage here to push direct sales. Also slowly editing all book pages to push the direct sales links. I cut out Kindle so I guess I gotta take all this seriously and point people that way.

** Demons of Oblivion will also have a rebrand when I get a chance to go through the files and tweak the books. It’s staying UF, though, because honestly Zara turns off a lot of sexist readers of various genders anyway. Elis’s covers are staying because there’s basically no male lead for anyone to ship with her so no one bugs me.

*** No really, that is a thing! A COMMON thing! You pick up an action and adventure series, I don’t know what to tell you if you hate action?! But the sheer relief at be able to take the genre disclaimers out of the eBook’s interior description because I’m hoping I can assume some media literacy with these was extraordinary.