NEW FEATURE: Indie Life

What is Indie Life?
Starting in the New Year, the Indelibles will host a monthly feature called INDIE LIFE. Modeled after Alex Cavanaugh's awesome Insecure Writer's Group, this will be a chance for indie authors to post about indie life, find each other, offer support, encouragement, news, helpful hints, and anything else that makes life as an indie author a little easier.

Sample Indie Life Post

You Don't Write, You Create Intellectual Property
by Susan Kaye Quinn

Recently, I realized that I'm making the transition from debut author to career author: I'm checking sales less often and making a production schedule. I'm not just treating my first book as a business, I'm embarking on a career. That career includes indie publishing for sure, possibly leveraging film, audio, and foreign rights, and maybe even a traditional deal along the way. 

Being indie means that it's easy to get distracted by all those things - the business side - to the exclusion of the creative side. But I know the most important thing I do with my time is create Intellectual Property. More than just a novel or a series, when I create a fictional world, I'm creating something that can be morphed into many different forms. Creating this Intellectual Property is hard work: it takes time to invent airships and crazy mind powers and post-singularity androids. Not to mention the characters that live in that fictional space and the adventures they embark on. But that creative work is doing something real, and done well, it adds value to the world through entertainment, inspiration, and diversion. 

A reader recently told me she was sick and having a miserable Monday. She picked up my book and started reading and was lost in the world of Kira and her life as a zero who couldn't read minds in a mindreading world. She thanked me for making her day a little better. 

As an author, I live for feedback like that - more than the sales count for the month or a new channel to sell through. Having that kind of impact on someone's life inspires me to go back to the keyboard and make sure I'm spending the bulk of my day creating the Intellectual Property that makes that impact possible. It keeps me focused on the most important part, and not coincidentally, the part I love most: the writing.

Susan Kaye Quinn is the author of the bestselling Mindjack Series, which includes three novels (Free Souls releases 12.14.12), three novellas, and a trailer. She's currently writing a steampunk fantasy romance, just for kicks. When that's out of her system, she has ambitious plans to embark on a series about the Singularity (the time when computers become more intelligent than humans) that should appeal to fans of the Mindjack novels. Or possibly play on Facebook all day. Could go either way.

How Do I Join Indie Life?
How: Sign up on the Linky at the end of this post
When: Post on the second Wednesday of the month (starting 1/9/2013)
What: Write anything indie related: something that will inspire or help a fellow indie; something that celebrates a release or a milestone; something that talks about the ups and downs, joys and heartaches of Being Indie.
Grab: The banner above to include in your posts!
Include: A bio of yourself at the end of your posts, so we can get to know you.

Because being Indie doesn't have to mean going it alone.

JOIN US FOR INDIE LIFE!