Celebrating Indie Authors: Mina Carter

We have Mina Carter with us today why she likes writing as an indie author.

What I Love About Being an Indie Author

by Mina Carter

Good morning! First off I’d like to introduce myself. I’m Mina and I have this little problem with writing. Simply put, I can’t get enough of it. I’m always writing, or thinking about writing, or making notes about writing. In fact, my family joke that you can’t leave me alone with a napkin and a pen for even a couple of minutes without coming back to find that I’ve plotting a novel and possibly world domination!

I’m sure I’m like a lot of authors in that I’m never not working. If I’m not writing, I’m doing one of the myriad other things that make up an authors daily schedule (unfortunately, despite my efforts to breed admin fairies, I haven’t managed it yet. The experiments into cleaning fairies are likewise fruitless :S) and I have this wee little thing about control.

I like to plan things in advance (yeah, I’m a plotter, not a punster) so I like to know how long it’s going to take me to publish a book from beginning to end. I sometimes find books get away with me, so I tend to think of my publishing schedule in terms of when I type ‘the end’ and the book goes into edits. Which is why I like indie publishing. Because I have control.

Control is a big one for me. I don’t have to fit the book in with a publisher’s schedule, or wait (Along with being a bit of a control freak, I’m also impatient!). I arrange editing and proofing, covers and uploading around where I want to be and it means I can react fairly quickly if an awesome plot idea occurs, or, like this last week, change a release day to avoid a big holiday.

I’m also in control of my covers, which, since I am a professional cover artist and photographer with a very visual imagination, is very important to me. I know how I want my cover to look and I’ll work on it until I get it just right. That’s not always possible with a publisher (for time and/or cost reasons, which is totally understandable).

There’s also the price issue. With indie-publishing I can set the prices of my books myself, arrange sales when I need to and alter in response to trends.

The last point, is speed. Because I don’t have to fit into other people’s schedules, I tend to write and release fairly quickly, within a couple of months from idea to release. Which means my currently releasing work is, in my opinion, always my freshest and best work (because we authors are always learning and perfecting our craft).

So, yeah. My name is Mina Carter, and I’m an indie-published author ☺

Mina was born and raised in the East Farthing of Middle Earth (otherwise known as the Midlands, England) and spend her childhood learning all the sorts of things generally required of a professional adventurer. Able to ride, box, shoot, make and read maps, make chainmail and use a broadsword (with varying degrees of efficiency) she was disgusted to find that adventuring is not considered a suitable occupation these days.

So, instead of slaying dragons and hunting vampires and the like, Mina spends her days writing about hot shifters, government conspiracies and vampire lords with more than their fair share of RAWR. Turns out wanna-be adventurers have quite the turn of imagination after all…

(But she keeps that sword sharp, just in case the writing career is just a dream and she really *is* an adventurer.)

The boring part: A full time author and cover artist, Mina can usually be found hunched over a keyboard or graphics tablet, frantically trying to get the images and words in her head out and onto the screen before they drive her mad. She’s addicted to coffee and would like to be addicted to chocolate, but, unfortunately, chocolate dislikes her.

Website:  http://mina-carter.com/

Check out Mina’s backlist of books here:  http://mina-carter.com/genre/allbooks/

a Rafflecopter giveaway