M.C. Frank's Blog, page 472

Pick a Cover for my Book!

I need your help picking out a cover for my Regency romance book, Ruined.It has already been out for a couple of months now, and while sales are going great, I did a little experiment (if you read this blog at all,  you'll know that I'm still feeling my way around self-pub and doing all kinds of experiments, hehe) back in the summer, when I was preparing for the book's launch: I made a completely different cover for the kindle and for the paperback versions of the book. As expected, the ebook has been selling far more than the paperback, but that's ok. The thing is, I want to know which cover direction would appeal more to my readers.
So this is where you guys come in.
Would you please leave a comment saying which cover appeals to you the most? Just that. (There's something in it for you, if you check after the break. ;) So, yeah, check after the break, lol)
Here are the covers:

          Green cover: My personal favorite.

Pink cover: Sold like crazy, but for some reason I hate it.


Blue cover: Represents the genre (Regency historical). 

Which one would you pick off the internet or on a bookshelf?
Please leave a vote in the comments, or on my tumblr. Those who do, can....
*click read more to read more*
also email me at alexandrapen@gmail.com and
1. say who you are (so I can check out your comment, you might have different names on your blog or tumblr and your email)
2. request a FREE review ebook copy of Ruined. I will send it to EVERYONE who requests it! (yes, everyone, heaven help me.)
3. Leave a link to your goodreads and/or amazon, so that I can see that you read inside the genre (historical fiction) because I have had some people read it who requested it without knowing what it was about, and then they didn't want to finish reading it. So you absolutely MUST be a historical romance fan slash reader. You can also just say that you read within the genre, I'll believe you (wink)
4. If you read it and review it, giving it a 4 or 5 star review on goodreads and/or amazon, I will SEND YOU A FREE PAPERBACK copy! 
(as you can tell this previous experiment is working out pretty brilliantly and I'm willing to repeat it).
 Only real reviews count, i.e. must be over 200 wordds, say something relative to the story and characters, so that it's obvious you read it, and also, if it's 4 or 5 stars and you're requesting the paperback for free, please don't bash the book in your review, because then it's not a 4 or 5 star review. (sorry for clarifying all this, I know you know it, but people be crazy)
Thanks in advance for your help picking the cover, I'm going mad with indecision here. This shouldn't be so hard, right?


**note: if you want a sneak peak of the plot here is the trailer:


and the 3  first chapters of the book to read for FREE. Enjoy!

A Writer's Prayer

A Writer’s PrayerLet me forgive myself for the stories that are not perfect,
for the scenes rushed through and the plot points fumbled,
and the language less than it ought to be,
and the phrases that make me wince
even though no one notices but me.Let me forgive myself for the stories I didn’t write,
didn’t finish, or didn’t let anyone see -
because I was too busy, too lazy, too tired, too frightened,
because I was living my life, or saving my life,
because I was falling in love, or falling out of love,
because I had run out of words, or room, or time,
let me forgive myself for all those stories
that live inside me
and not on the page.Let me forgive myself for my failures, but also
for all those times when I tallied my shortcomings
instead of celebrating each small success.
Let me celebrate now:
not the life that I dreamed of, but the life that I have,
not the stories that I dreamed of, but the stories that I’ve made,
not the writer I imagined I’d one day be, but the writer that I am.And then let me keep working.                                                             - Terri Windling

reblogged from Neil Gaiman 

Named after Stars

Most Black family members are named after stars or constellations.
reblogged from thebest-teenagetimes via tumblr

via expressyourbeautyy on tumblr

via expressyourbeautyy on tumblr

Another Austen (Melissa Nathan - The Nanny)

I recently dsicovered Melissa Nathan.The first book I read by her was Persuading Annie, a Persuasion retelling (if you don't know by now that Persuasion is my favorite Jane Austen novel, you really should subscribe to this blog. jk) and I instantly fell in love with her humor, her wit and her swoooooooony scenes.
And then, I grabbed the nanny.Here is the synopsis (from goodreads)

Twenty-three-year-old Jo Green knows that if she has to spend one more night in ultra-provincial Niblet-Upon-Avon she'll go completely bonkers! So she answers an ad in the paper, bids her devoted boyfriend Shaun adieu, and heads off to the big city. With a new job that offers excitement; a cool car; and her own suite with a TV, DVD player, and a cell phone, how can she go wrong?

Then she meets . . . the Fitzgeralds -- Dick and Vanessa and their unruly brood of rugrats who have suddenly been entrusted into Jo's care. There's eight-year-old "psycho-babe" Cassandra; bloodthirsty Zak, the six-year-old Terminator; and timid little Tallulah.

So what else could go wrong? How about the arrival of Dick's children from his first marriage: teenage Toby and (gulp!) all-grown-up-and-very-nicely-at-that Josh the accountant? And now that she has to temporarily share her room with Josh, Jo's head is really in a spin -- because with her hometown beau still in the picture and a sexy possibility sleeping just a foot away, life has suddenly gotten very complicated indeed!

Man, this book ruined my life in the best way possible.I just couldn't stop laughing. Then I had to stop laughing in order to read more, because I just couldn't. Put. It. Down. On one hand I needed to know what was going to happen with Jo and Cassie and Vanessa and Josh and every other character in the book -seriously, can't this author write one unlikeable character? I was in love with the bad guys and the good guys and the kids and the adults... I even miss the stupid house they lived in now that I'm done with the novel. And, to be honest, it's not that they were all lovable per se. It's that they were alive. They leapt out of the page at me, with their little mannerisms, their weird comments, the little details of their clothes. I was there. I did not read this book. I did not watch it unfold like a movie in my head as I read, like you generally do with a good, engaging book. I lived in it. I know these people intimately, I was there when they were behaving like idiots, when their worlds came crashing down, when they fell in love. I miss them right now so much that I can see the hugest reading slump heading my way, and I don't even care. 
Which brings us to Josh (the not even caring does). I mean I've never read of a more gorgeous, irritating, vulnerable and totally mouthwatering hero since mr Darcy.And of course The Nanny has a million Pride and Prejudice points, where the main characters swap opinions about each other maddeningly (and hilariously), and where romance surprises you in the most swoonworthy and unexpected of ways.
To be honest, I've read about three of Melissa Nathan's novels, and I can say that no one does social commedy, family life or intense romance as well as she.She is, to me (early death, and glorious carreer left in the middle aside) the modern Jane Austen, no doubt about it. Her novels aren't chick-lit, they're not romances, they're not comedies. They are literature. I particularly enjoyed how she uses themes and tropes from Jane Austen's books, but twists them around to fit completely original plots and characters.The Nanny, for instance, is not a retelling, but it has SO many beloved aspects of Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility and even Mansfield Park a little bit. It's the best thing that's happened to me since I discovered Austen in my early teens, and now that I'm slowly making my way around her books (much like I did with Jane's back then) I know that they'll be all read soon, and I won't know what to do with myself.
Reread them, I guess.







Bio (from Goodreads)

Melissa Jane Nathan (13 June 1968 – 7 April 2006) was a journalist and UK author of popular "chick lit" novels in the early 2000s.
When working on Persuading Annie (2001), Nathan was diagnosed with breast cancer. She refused to let the illness dominate her life, and - in public anyway - was unfailingly positive. She had no time for most journalism written by cancer sufferers: "self-indulgent dirges without a helpline in sight", as she described them; she tried to joke about cancer's unoriginality in her Jewish Chronicle column and then added:
That was what you call laughing in adversity. It's what makes people smile mistily at me, as if I'm fading in front of their very eyes while telling knock-knock jokes. What they don't know is that I have daydreams about being the oldest person at their funeral.
Ironically, the characters in Nathan's first book, 'Pride, Prejudice and Jasmin Field', were starring in a play version of Pride & Prejudice that benefitted breast cancer research. The book was written prior to Nathan knowing about her own future diagnosis with the disease.
She died aged 37 from breast cancer in April 2006. She is survived by her husband, Andrew Saffron, and their son, Sam.
Her final novel, The Learning Curve, was published posthumously in August 2006. A writing award has been established to recognize quality comedy romance writers in her honor.

How To: Life Hack 3

source

Book Candy Classics

I'm so excited to introduce...


Book candy classics
they’re funthey’re gorgeous they’re new!

sink your teeth intoyour favorite story
and
discover new onesto swoon over









purchase here

Best books of 2015!

I need your Review!

Bare with me, just doing a little experiment here.

I'm offering to send a review copy, an ARC of my new book, No Ordinary Star, to W H O E V E R asks. Yes, you read that right. Am I crazy? Probably. Thing is, I'm not crazy, I'm just trusting you guys.

Here are the terms:

Send me an email requesting it at alexandrapen at gmail dot com (also you can send me a tumblr ask)

Please be certain that you can read and review a 120-ish page book within the next FEW WEEKS.

Please read the synopsis here and the first few chapters on my previous blog post, so that you'll only request it if it's a genre you GENERALLY READ.

Please don't be one of those sh***y persons that requests and READS a full book for free and then forgets and/or refuses to post a review to help the author out. I've sent about fifteen review copies out, to great personal expense because I don't live in the US and n o t h i n g. Not even one of them bothered with a rating, let alone a review. Which brings me to you.

Please help me, if you like. There are nearly five thousand people requesting this arc on Goodreads as of now, and I'm offering it to you for free, for whoever asks for it. Just like that. Please don't take advantage of me.

Thank you so much for reading and (hopefully) reviewing my novel.
To whoever sends me a link of their 4 or 5 star review on goodreads or amazon, I'll  send a print copy. 

The world that forgot Christmas

In a land far, far away, Christmas no longer exists.
In a land of snow and emptiness, of spies and lies, joy is a forgotten secret.
Merry Christmas from a Christmasless world.
It's the year 2525.



Start the journey now.
Christmas surprise after the break....
Just tell me how you spent Christmas this year, that's all!
(I ate everything in sight, that's how I spent Christmas this year) 
Stay happy and safe. Hugs.