#so it’s not Up To Date but!! it’s a decent chunk into riptide at the very least

[enderspawn]

I was looking through your jrwi cardd and are there actually ep transcripts??! This would have made my bilingual life so easy like 2 years ago when i started listening to them....

Partly? yes! I’m not sure how much, if any, of them are “publicly” shared yet, but there’s a group of fans (that I’ve also joined) who’ve taken up transcribing each episode! The carrd will eventually be linked to the transcripts when they’re made fully public, but if you’d like to contribute and/or get access to the current work-in-progress transcript drive, I’d contact @pistolwaltz since they’re a mod on the project ^^

[jeannereames]

Hi!! I just finished reading dancing with the lion books and loved them… I had a doubt, is it a duology or are there more books to come… if yes do they have a tentative release date??

Dancing with the Lion was written as one book; that's why the author's note is at the end of the second book. It took me almost 30 years to sell it. I do hope to continue the story, but there are issues.

Riptide, which is a queer-friendly Romance publisher, bought it because they could market it as Romance (sorta) and divided it for publishing. But they have zero interest in the rest of the series because Romance (as a genre) requires a "happily ever after" ending, or at least "happily for now," plus a main focus on the relationship, not the politics, battles, etc. They kindly accepted the politics in Dancing...but yeah...it just gets more convoluted and dark from here on out. They don't want that.

So what am *I* doing to sell more Alexander? (Because you bet your sweet patootie I'd like to write and sell more...)

I'm working on a 6-book epic fantasy series called Master of Battles designed to get me an agent and a contract with one of the Big Five publishers. It's epic fantasy, which does have some historical analogs, but set on a different world.

If I can sell that to a major publisher, I may have an advocate to help find a publisher for more Alexander novels. But I can't write more on Dancing until I have a reasonable expectation that I can sell it. I'd rather try a different strategy. Otherwise, one is sinking YEARS of work to no end.

When I retire from teaching, I will take up writing full time--fiction and non-fiction/academic. If I cannot find a publisher for the novel at that point, I may have the time to look into producing it independently, as I'll have more time. We'll see.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP?

Talk up the novels to your friends. There really is NO substitute for grass-roots publicity. If you liked the books, post about them on social media, do a BookTok if you’re on that platform, or just talk to buddies about them, so they'll buy them (and hopefully talk about them in turn). But only suggest friends read them who you think will like them. It doesn't help to push them on people who'll hate them. :-)

Rate (and if willing review) them on sites such as Goodreads and Amazon. I'm no fan of such conglomerate sources, but agents (and publishers) pay attention. As an M/M Romance, Dancing's rating are average-to-poor. But compared to other Greek historicals (non-Romance), it's not doing that badly. Authors such as Renault, Steven Pressfield, Chris Cameron, and of course, Madeline Miller, all outstrip mine, but compared to "general" (not strongly promoted) Greek history novels from smaller publishers, it's decent.

BUT....

MORE IS BETTER to continue sales. Several hundred ratings/reviews are what agents want to see. Alas, that's how sales work. They really don't care about quality. They want to know if what I write can sell books. Historicals are an automatic hard sell. Genre historicals (Historical Romance, Historical Fantasy, even Historical Mysteries) sell quicker, but much depends on where the emphasis falls: how much history, how much [insert genre].

And the plain fact is...marketing matters. Riptide has done their best, but they're a Romance publisher. They're missing a large chunk of the potential market. Get the book into the right hands of readers who will like it...that's my goal.

NOTE: I don't want to sell the novels to people who'll hate them. I'm not a huckster. I wrote a novel about characters and an era I love. I want to share it with others who'll also love it, or at least like it. If that narrows my sales market...I'm okay with that.