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Ksenia Anske

October 2, 2015

How do you find out about new writing?

by Ksenia Anske


Illustration by Daniel Stolle

Illustration by Daniel Stolle

Illustration by Daniel Stolle

Illustration by Daniel Stolle

For the longest time I had trouble finding out what was happening in the literary world. It seemed everyone knew about some new book or some new author or some new prize winner before me. Not that it bothered me much—I have such a long lists of classics to chew through that I didn't really care. But I'm now going through that list at a fair lick, reading about 100-110 books a year, and it's gotten to the point where: 

  1. I got tired of the oldish-sounding English and wanted to read something contemporary and not having to wade through the weirdly composed sentences and the archaic turns of phrases and having to put up with occasional misogyny and some puritanism here and there and constant references to religion or God.
  2. I got sick of reading mostly white males as literature seems to stand on the bones of white males and I've had about enough of that—I still love you, white males, my partner Royce including, but I wanted more women voices and black voices and gay voices and all kinds of voices.
  3. I have found authors whose voices I loved and I wanted to read more of their recent writing.
  4. I felt a new hunger, a hunger for more than just novels. I wanted to expand, to read poetry and essays and non-fiction.
  5. I was plain jealous of hearing all these news about new books from other people and I wanted to be at the source of the news too, to be the first to find out about this new book or that new book and to form my own opinion about it before reading someone else's opinion about it.
  6. I was feeling increasingly sad because I still haven't found a good source for news on great new indie books and I'm still upset that I don't know where and how to find them. 
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TAGS: reading, indie, indie writers, indie books, self-publishing, discoverability


August 21, 2014

How to make an awesome book cover

by Ksenia Anske


Book covers from The Book Cover Archive

Book covers from The Book Cover Archive

Book covers from The Book Cover Archive

Book covers from The Book Cover Archive

I suppose it's perfect timing to talk about book covers, in light of Amanda Palmer releasing the naked cover of her book, The Art of Asking, or, rather, her being naked on said cover, and in light of me saying, hey, it's high time I should be naked on a cover too, and her saying, that is a fine idea, and her photographer Allan Amato saying, would you like my rates, cause I'm looking to photograph more naked ladies for book covers, and me saying, well, I gotta write a book on which I could pose naked, and Twitter saying, why don't you write a book on writing and call it something like, EXPOSE YOURSELF THROUGH YOUR WRITING, and me saying, sure, I can totally do it, people have been asking me to put together a book from my blog posts, and, holy shit, this is the longest sentence I ever wrote.

Anyway.

Book covers. We're talking here about us struggling indie writers, well, maybe not struggling exactly, bad choice of words, more like, having to be not only a writer but also the toilet cleaner and the accountant and the marketer and the book cover designer...wait. Book cover designer. Well, some of us can afford to hire those. But, despite the fact that some of us can, the result is not always, how to say it nicely, very favorable. If I'm not being nice, I would say (and I'm prepared to take full consequences and feel the hotness of your wrath on my skin), most indie book covers are ugly and unreadable.

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TAGS: book cover, book covers, cover, covers, Amanda Palmer, naked, colors, images, fonts, indie


July 4, 2014

MAD TUTU writing competition

by Ksenia Anske


Photo by Royce Daniel

Photo by Royce Daniel

Photo by Royce Daniel

Photo by Royce Daniel

Okay. YOU asked for it, so I don't want to hear any whining or complaining or trying to wiggle out of it. We will have, yes, WE WILL HAVE, a writing competition. Right here. Right on this blog. And if it goes well, I might repeat it, or maybe even make it into a recurring thing. Because I really want to find great indie authors out there. I KNOW YOU ARE OUT THERE. And share your writing. And give you a little plug and push and visibility, as much as I can. Well, and of course, just to have a little fun, right? Maybe it will become a thing. You know. MAD TUTU will become a thing. Who knows. Whatever, not important. Here is what's important. 

MAD TUTU WRITING COMPETITION RULES.

THEME: Fantasy or magical realism or a mixture of both. Okay, you can throw in a touch of horror or a touch of sci-fi, if you're dying to do so. Just forget genres, think of it this way. Your story has to have magic.

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TAGS: writing competition, mad tutu, writing, competition, indie, fantasy, magical realism, magic


July 2, 2014

Let's find and read great indie books

by Ksenia Anske


Photo by Noukka Signe

Photo by Noukka Signe

Photo by Noukka Signe

Photo by Noukka Signe

I’m going to start something crazy. I want to discover great indie books. I've been wanting to do this for a long long time now, and I've been frustrated at the lack of a mechanism to find them. So. The lesson I learned in life is, if I'm frustrated about something, if there is something missing in the world, instead of bitching about it on every corner, I need to roll up the sleeves and do it myself. Because somebody has to. Another lesson I learned is, people don't like starting things. They like shouting and being upset, but starting things is messy and uncomfortable and takes a lot of work and to hell with it, for sure somebody out there has already started it and I'm busy with my own life anyway and yada yada yada. Yeah, we heard all that. Also, perhaps I am completely blind. Perhaps right now you think me ignorant because I don't know about some wonderful place that talks about great indie books. In fact, I know of one. I'm guilty of struggling to find time to go read through all of it. I'm talking about KBoards. There are tons of indie authors there and if you're an indie and not on it yet, GET ON IT. They have various forum posts with writers suggesting great books to other writers. I will get to it. I WILL. It's just while I'm in the middle of writing, I hardly have the brain capacity to do anything else outside my writing.

Anyway.

Back to the topic.

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TAGS: indie authors, indie books, indie writers, indie, reading, great books, great authors


April 15, 2014

What I would've done differently if I was publishing my 1st novel again

by Ksenia Anske


Photo by Joel Robison

Photo by Joel Robison

Photo by Joel Robison

Photo by Joel Robison

I got asked this fabulous question on Twitter and scratched my head, because yes, there would be a gazillion (okay, not exactly gazillion, but many) things I would've done differently if I could publish my 1st novel NOW, with all this knowledge I gained from self-publishing over the last 2 years. Almost 2 years. I will be 2 years in May since I quit my job and started writing full time, and since I self-published my very first book, a little book of tweets on writing and creative nonsense called BLUE SPARROW. So, see, I'm still very fucking green so don't listen to what I say, go listen to some other big important experienced people who pound on their chests and who tell you they know what they're talking about because I don't know jack-shit! Whew. Okay. I got this one off my consciousness. Now, let's continue. If by some miracle you're still here, indulge in the stuff I have learned. Let's start from the beginning.

1. SLOW DOWN.

Okay, this is the most valuable lesson I learned. The end. This blog post is over.

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TAGS: self-publishing, publishing, tips, fonts, book, indie, indie authors