Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Get Stripped Now!


GET STRIPPED TODAY!

FIELD STRIPPED IS AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER!

FIFTEEN NY TIMES AND AMAZON BESTSELLING AUTHORS!

ONLY $0.99 FOR A LIMITED TIME!

Fifteen stories filled with love, romance, and smokin' hot alpha men sure to get your temperature rising.

Amazon US: http://tinyurl.com/zbbjc2k
Amazon UK: http://tinyurl.com/j79vcjs
Amazon CA: http://tinyurl.com/gnmppom
Barnes & Noble: http://tinyurl.com/hrtfm78
iTunes: http://tinyurl.com/jeg8wfl
Kobo: http://tinyurl.com/jleayfd


I'm proud to announce that my novella, Locked and Loaded: Knights of War MC Book 1, will be included in this set.

One more term paper and Holly Farris will have her graduate degree in journalism. When her research lands her in a seedy bar in Dallas, she crosses paths with an alluring ex-Army Ranger turned enforcer for an outlaw motorcycle club.
Hunter McKay doesn’t like reporters nosing around his club but he’s drawn to the petite blonde with the big attitude. When Holly’s inadvertent involvement in an FBI investigation provokes a prison gang to put a hit on her, Hunter must decide how far he’s willing to go to save her.
COMING JUNE 26, 2016!!

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

I Was Wrong About Ellora's Cave

Warning: When I’m pissed off, I cuss like a drunk sailor on a weekend pass so this post will be riddled with profanity.

My penchant for wanting to believe the best in people has bitten me in the ass one too many times. So, I’m breaking my silence on the Ellora’s Cave debacle. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to contract my first book with EC. At the time, they had a great reputation for not only paying royalties on time but paying early. Fuck yeah! I thought I finally got my foot in the door with a legitimately successful publishing company. My unabashed glee was short-lived when that first book was published. I started hearing grumblings about late royalties. I didn’t want to believe that voice whispering in my ear that I was probably about to get fucked three ways from Sunday. In the interim, I’d sold them more books.

When my first round of royalties came in, I did a little fist pump. Maybe the rumors were unfounded. Maybe these other authors were just unhappy that they weren’t getting paid every month anymore when the contracts provided for *quarterly payments. Maybe Ellora’s Cave wasn’t really abdicating the provisions of the contracts. See the opening line of this post. I wanted to believe things weren’t as they were. But wait, why is this check dated November 3, 2014, while the postmark on the envelope is dated December 26, 2014? What the hell?

After the myriad excuses sent by email blaming the late royalties on faulty software and sick relatives, I finally came to terms with the fact that I was being bent over the barrel along with many others. When I reconciled that in my mind, I sent an email demanding my rights be reverted on all titles because EC had breached all my contracts by not paying royalties on time. The canned reply I got was this:

I'm sorry, you have misinterpreted the contract you signed. Breach of clause 16 regarding royalties payments (or any other contract clause) does not void the contract nor revert book rights to you. When a contract is breached, the party claiming breach has the option of waiting for the other party to correct the situation or may pursue legal action to gain correction of the situation. In such case, the court would typically set a deadline by which time the situation must be corrected ("cured"), and if not corrected the court would decide on further action.

So, basically, to paraphrase, I was told that it didn’t really matter that they weren’t paying me. If I didn’t want to wait for them to remedy the situation, I could sue them to enforce the contracts. Motherfuckers. Not only were they not paying me, but now my books were being held hostage by contracts they clearly breached and they were telling me to go fuck myself in a very polite way. By the way, my EC books have never been big sellers and hiring an intellectual property attorney to sue on my behalf would have cost a shit ton more than they owed me. I simply wasn’t, and still am not, in the position to spend thousands of dollars to sue them. And I shouldn’t have to.

My last check was in December 2015 for **March-June 2105 royalties. I’ve put in requests for reversion of rights based on low sales for a couple of my titles. However, without any royalty statements beyond June 2015, it’s a little hard to figure that shit out. With a heavy heart, I removed all my EC titles from my website and don’t promote them anymore. That’s what hurts even more than the money…the fact that I have to tell my readers not to buy some of the books I poured my god damned heart and soul into. That’s just seriously fucked up. I still have a contract for one more book in my series but when all this started rolling downhill, I couldn’t write it. It was just too painful. For a while, I couldn’t write anything. You have to be a creative to really grasp how much shit like this will fuck with your head and shut you down. So, that next book in my series…I’ll tell Ellora’s Cave what they told me. If you want it, sue me.

There’s no damned witch hunt aimed at EC despite the claims being made on a certain nonsensical and insane website. We’re just pissed off and tired of being jerked around. I stand with all the other authors who are in the same boat that I am. I was wrong to give EC the benefit of the doubt. I’m sorry it took me so long to speak out. I hope you all will forgive my initial optimism. My hope now is that we’ll all get our rights back and we can close this chapter of our writing careers and move on to bigger, better things.

Blessings to all.

Alyssa #NotChilled

* I'm including this note for clarity. I paraphrased what the contract says for brevity purposes. It does not say "quarterly." What it does say is this: "Publisher shall pay Author royalties in accordance with a schedule to be determined at Publisher's discretion but in no event shall payment be me made less frequently than every three (3) calendar months,..."

** Corrected to include royalties from March-June 2015 for the December 2015 check I received. I erroneously wrote just March 2015 initially.