#cavernousask

Sure! A few reasons actually. One, Cavernous is a planned trilogy, and not only are these hard to sell as a debut, but my day job makes keeping a regular writing schedule challenging and I wanted to be able to write without the pressure of a publishing timeline. Also, between my writing partner and I, we are close to lots of talented artists and graphic designers and felt confident that not only could we source our own art and design elements for the book, but both had the strong desire to be in control of these art and design elements rather than ceding control to a publisher. The financial element factors in as well - in self-publishing the money goes directly to you upon payout, and you don't have to wait on the delayed pay structure of traditional publishing.

The primary reason, however, is that we felt Cavernous would be a hard sell within the traditional publishing industry overall. It sits somewhere between "erotica" and "romance" while being both fantasy and contemporary in a market where that's not particularly sought after. It's queer and woman focused, set in a country that many people in the US market are not familiar with, and lacks ad-friendly popular "tropes." Cavernous does not follow a traditional romance novel story format, and instead has both a large ensemble cast and lacks a traditional "happily ever after" which, in the romance publishing space, is something of a bullet in the foot. We never even considered trad publishing, to be honest, because we think these unique elements are significant strengths in the book, but would be seen as problematic by a traditional publisher.

Self-publishing has this reputation of being a sea of books that authors tried and failed to publish traditionally, and while it's possible that there was a time in the past that that was largely true, it's definitely not true anymore. Self-publishing is a smart first choice for a lot of authors working in unconventional genres, with marginalized identities, or writing about culturally censored or taboo topics. Almost every other art form out there has a vibrant, celebrated indie/underground scene, but for some reason underground fiction is still really maligned, which can be really discouraging. But, I believe in it, and I stand behind my choice as it being the right fit for this book.

Ideally yes! Quick search brings it up for me: [x] but idk the ins and outs of how international amazon really works. Does that link work for you?

I've also learned that sometimes ebooks on the mobile app don't like to show up, so give it a try on desktop and see if that works.

Thanks sm for the question!! <3

Cavernous was my covid project - I was struggling to work on anything creative during this time and really needed something light and fun to work on without too much pressure. This was right around that time was when Ruby Dixon's barbarian series was getting really popular, and I loved the self-indulgent silliness of this creative prompt which involved putting mostly ordinary, contemporary characters in an outlandish situation and figuring out how on earth they're going to turn the situation sexual. A friend at work and I were chatting about this, and she asked me where I would set a goofy romance novel if I wrote one, and I said "a cave" as mostly a joke. But, by the end of the workday I had rough-outlined pretty much the whole book.

At the time, my friends and I had been discussing the bachelor/bachelorette franchise and watching a lot of reality tv trash, so elements of that got thrown in. My own more general love for ambitious women scientist characters (Susan Calvin, Ellie Sattler, Jo Harding, etc) drove the character development. The cultural setting was mostly ancillary to the fact that the deepest caves in the world are in fact actually in Georgia, so I ran with the Eastern European influences from there.

Yeah! Carrotte lmao. That's just carrot in french (carotte), but i added an extra letter to make it... not carrot. Cannot for the life of me recall why I named the character this.

OOH yeah I'm kinda dying to talk about it actually so ty! I'll try to give an overview without being too spoilery.

I'm relieved to say that there are no major structural/developmental changes, and that basically everything on the docket is small adjustments to internal character voice and dialog to make sure everyone's motivations are as clear as possible, their arcs are distinctive, and the conversations, u know, crackle. Joanna got the most notes and is undergoing the most changes (Which didn't not surprising! She's been a challenging character for me to nail.) This is mostly going to be about turning the dial up on her sense of adventure/enthusiasm and adding more of her backstory (esp. around her parents & upbringing) to contextualize her decision making - in the grand scheme she should still feel like the Joanna that's already in the text, just with more of her to chew on.

In fact, a lot of the changes are about just adding more context and backstory, so while I really am trying not to balloon the word count too much, I've accepted that this thing is going to probably end up sitting between 120k and 125k words. (It's at like 118k currently) Thankfully I already had my meltdown about not being able to scrunch it under 100k, and I've since made my peace with it 🙏 bless

This is getting long, here's a cut!

The two chapters that are getting overhauled, 20 and 28, are both largely about getting Mikah into the story more - he's so important but remains in the background for so much of the story. In both of these I'm doing some cutting - there will be a little less javelin throwing and certain long carriage convos will become shorter carriage convos, and in exchange there will be a little more elder prince drama, so hopefully that's good news!