Auryn Hadley's Blog, page 15

Challenge Accepted Cover Reveal – FRIDAY!

This is a novel that is near and dear to my heart. Challenge Accepted was actually written on a dare – and turned into a series. A good friend of mine said that there were some things that just couldn’t go together in a single book. When asked for examples, she listed off: horses, gamer punks, romance, and sexism. Yep, my mind immediately jumped to Gamer Gate (if you don’t know about it, trust me, it got ugly). From there, the rest was easy.

I have been a gamer since before MMOs existed (yea...

An interesting chat about women

I was talking with my husband the other night about tropes in fiction. You see, I really like to muddle with the typical “expectations” and breaking a trope is as exciting to me as a roller coaster is to a normal person. In the end, the topic came around to popular presentation of women (by him, not me!)

In his esteemed opinion, men are typically attracted to strong, capable women. Shrinking violets and dainty, demure damsels are an affectation of women – in today’s world. While sure, there’s...

What an amazing release weekend!

First, I have to tell everyone who read When We Were Kings and/or When We Were Dancing THANK YOU! I mean it. Thank you so much for taking a chance on an author you probably had never heard of before. Thank you for buying the book, or borrowing. Most of all, thank you to everyone who took the time to leave a review.

I know that this isn’t exactly a “hot” subject in fantasy right now. Monarchies are over done. Princesses saving the world? Oh, that’s “old hat”. So much about this series begs to...

What if the trolls knew where you lived?

A few decades ago, setting up the perfect chance for things to go wrong in a book was easy. One girl, one dark alley, and she’d be isolated. Today, not so much.

Everyone has a cell phone. Most have GPS locating apps, find friend/family, or such. Walking home? I’d be shocked if the girl didn’t have a flashlight app on, while texting to her bestie. This is the constantly connected world we live in, and portraying it in literature makes a few things a bit… less easy.

Now add in social media, vid...

How to be an Author

It seems everyone wants to do it. No one knows the rules. Some say there’s money out there for the taking. Let me tell ya the truth.

Being an author is like a job.

Yeah, it may be a fun job, but there’s still some responsibilities and deadlines that have to be met. Sometimes, there’s even a few bits that kinda suck to do. So, let me give you a very brief overview of what you need to consider before you press “publish” on KDP.

First, you need a story. I’m not talking about some interaction bet...

Feminism (or lack of) in Romance

The past few days I’ve been trying to get a little reading in, but can’t. I’m just sick of the sexism. Even worse, most of it comes from WOMEN. Gah. I love a good romance novel. I really do. The problem is finding one. All too often, the woman is portrayed as an idiot, a gold digger, or worse. The men are usually rich jerks, who treat their love interest as worse than crap, and we’re supposed to swoon over it.

This makes me wonder if women really find this sexy or if we’re so conditioned to a...

The New World of Books

I love reading. I think I love it almost as much as writing! The digital revolution has released millions of books to the public which otherwise would have been stuck in a drawer somewhere. It’s given us such gems as The Martian, and broken down barriers with mainstream erotica, as in Fifty Shades of Grey (which I still couldn’t finish). It’s also made it hard to find all the little fishes in this massive ocean of little fish. Without a miracle – or some brilliant marketing and a whole butt-l...

When Science Fiction isn’t

Facial recognition. Automated social media. Global position tracking. Satelite monitoring. Consumer data analysis. Handheld scanners. Does this sound like science fiction?

It’s all available today. There’s no need to wonder about when this stuff will come to pass. It’s here. Now. Today. Facebook tags our faces for us. Our phones have buddy locators. Drones survey just about everything. Signal detectors, handheld scanners, and communications devices are all common apps on our phones. We text,...

The Genre

Readers tend to find books by genre. This leads to certain expectations. Romances have beautiful women and bare-chested men. Fantasy has horses and swords. Horror is dark and mysterious, thrillers have blood, and urban fantasy has some chick wielding magic or outdated weapons. We expect this. We think nothing of it, until the cover is for the wrong genre.

Imagine a military suspense with some bare-chested man and nothing else. How about a romance with a blood-splattered cover? Yeah, you see w...

Promoting a book

As I have mentioned before, the trick to becoming a successful author is getting discovered. It isn’t about writing a good book, having a great cover, or any of those other things. If you have the best book in the world, but no one knows about it, then you still can’t get success.

And so, I’m going to be experimenting. I will be tracking my results from a few promotions sites. I’m going to keep this in the reasonable price (i.e. $50 USD or less, on average) just to see if there’s anything tha...