Penelope Peters's Blog, page 4

Five Ways to Help an Author (Without Writing a Single Word)

Tomorrow is The Omega Nanny‘s Release Day! (I keep thinking it in that sing-song way one says “Groundhog Day”, which is really appropriate, since both days are largely inconsequential to 99.9% of the general public.)

Drive, Phil, Drive!

I keep feeling like I’m forgetting something – no idea what, though. I mentioned this to my husband last night, and he gave me a very serious look and said, “Pen – did you forget to write the book?”

I’ve reblogged and retweeted and created the Goodreads page (and there’s even a lovely early review for Omega Nanny!) I’m feeling extremely positive about my out-of-nowhere little book – which is such a pleasant feeling!

Ω Ω Ω

It’s kind of a given – if you like a book, the best way to help an author is to write a review of that book in some visible location, such as Amazon or Goodreads. And this is true – readers love reviews that give them an idea of whether or not they’re likely to enjoy the book too.

But what if you don’t want to write a review? What if you can’t write a review? What if you turn into a frozen block of self-conscious ice upon seeing that blinking cursor at the top of a very, very empty text box?

(Don’t worry. It happens to authors, too.)

It’s okay. There are other ways that you can help – all without having to write a single word.

(You might have to click the mouse button a few times, though.)

Rate the book. Amazon Kindle even makes this easy for you, if you’ve downloaded the book from them. Once you finish, they’ll pop up a screen that asks you for your rating. If you’ve got a Goodreads account, they’ll even post the rating in both places for you. Click on your favored star rating… and they’ll do the rest. No writing necessary!

Vote on other reviews. Both Goodreads and Amazon have a system to “vote” on previously written reviews – for Amazon, it’s that little “Was this helpful?” question that follows every review. For Goodreads, it’s the more blatant “Did you like this review?”

Why is this important? Well, reviews with the most votes are more likely to be the first shown when someone navigates to that page – regardless of whether or not the reviewer liked or disliked the book. If you liked a book, and there’s a review already written that you agree with – vote on it! The more votes a review gets, the more likely it is to be at the top of the page – and the more people will see it. Plus, they’ll even be able to see how many people agreed with that review – which just gives it more weight. All without having to write a word.

Reblog/retweet on social media. “But how can I blog about something without writing a word, Pen?” Easy. Most authors, to some extent, are egotistical. (Some more than others.) At some point after a book’s release, though, we’ll have made a comment about it, or shared a link where to purchase it. Some will even provide links for you in the body of the ebook itself. Click on those links – reblog or retweet those posts – and you’ve just shared with all of your followers that great new book you finished reading.

Amazon provides links for you to reblog/retweet on their website – if you navigate to the book’s page, you’ll see a handy row of them under all of the purchasing information on the right-hand side of the screen. Click on your preferred social media platform – press “Post” – and you’re good to go!

“But I only have six followers! And one of them’s a chicken!”

“Whatcha reading, Maude?”

That’s okay. They’re five people who might not have known about the book before. And maybe the chicken will like the book, too. Thing with social media – it’s not about how many followers you have, it’s about who’s online watching at any given time.

Shove the book into someone else’s hands – literally. Buying the book for someone else is the obvious route – and don’t let me dissuade you from that course. But lending it is equally good. (Some ebooks can be shared for a limited amount of time, if the author has allowed for that.) I know it seems a little counter-intuitive to lend a book – after all, the author doesn’t get the proceeds – but really what you’re doing is trying to convert another person into a fan of that author, which will in turn make it more likely that they’ll buy the next book. Trust me. Authors are really good with that concept.

And if you can’t find a friend (or co-worker, or unsuspecting person who sat next to you on the bus that one day) who wants to read it – consider donating a copy to your local library. Most libraries love free books, and who knows? Maybe it’ll find a dozen new readers that way. (Check with your local library first to see what their donation guidelines are.)

Join your favorite author’s mailing list or follow them on social media.Assuming you aren’t already, of course. Authors may traffic in words, but numbers are super important too – and knowing there’s a certain amount of people who are more or less signing up to read literally every word we put out there is a gigantic egotistical boost –  which in turn is going to spur us to write even more. (And hey – more is exactly what you want from the authors you love, right?)

 

So there you have it – five super easy and fast ways to help an author you enjoy, all without writing a single word. Of course.. feel free to write a few words too. (Even just a simple “I liked this” is a great way to get started, and very nice to hear. We aren’t picky, trust me, and we aren’t going to judge you on lack of verbosity.)

I’m sure there’s other ways to help writers without writing a word – but it’d take writing them here to let me know.[image error]

Busy Week(s) Ahead

It’s the week before The Omega Nanny comes out… but if you think I’m sitting back on my laurels, you’d be wrong.

The big news is that I had the best idea for The Country Alpha. Those of you who have been reading between the lines know that I’ve been having a little trouble with the characters and the storyline – half the reason I went ahead and wrote The Omega Nanny was because I kept running into roadblocks with TCA.

And then over the weekend, I had the best idea for how to fix it. Well… not fix it, exactly. But make it really, really interesting, and give it a twist that I’m not sure any other author has tried. Not in the way I’m going to write it, anyway.

The only drawback is that it’s going to take a lot more time to finish, because – without giving it away, because even I’m not sure this is going to work – I’m essentially writing two complete books.

If I can pull it off… it’ll be awesome, and you’re going to love it.

If I can’t… ah well. At least the negative reviews should be hysterical!

What that means, though, is that I have got to set down to work, and work hard, over the next few weeks. My older son wraps up Kindergarten in mid-June, and then we’re packing up and moving at the end of June, and won’t arrive in our new locale until mid-August. Two kids and a cat and me in a hotel room for at least six weeks… probably won’t leave a lot of time for writing or editing. So I need to get as much done as I can get done now.

So I’m taking the drastic measure (*gulp*) of blocking myself from Twitter and Tumblr and most other do-nothing sites for the rest of the month. I have no will-power about those sites at all. Most of the time, I allow myself to go on in 5-minute increments, and that tends to work pretty well.

Last night? I spent two hours reading headcanons on Check Please! characters and watching “Where Are They Now?” videos from the Oprah Winfrey show. I have updates on the pregnant man, the Barbie-doll woman, and the Octomom, as well as plenty of happily-ever-after endings for Jack and Eric… and nothing new written for Country Alpha.

So we’ll see how it goes. I’m going to allow myself an hour a day to be on those places, so I won’t completely disappear (and they do provide a nice break from time to time, which is good for your brain). And hopefully, by the time May rolls through, I’ll be well on my way to having two very complete first and maybe second drafts of Country Alpha.

Wish me luck!

 

Have you pre-ordered The Omega Nanny yet?

Yes? FABULOUS, thank you!

No? That’s okay, I still love you. (But here, have some links anyway.)

Pre-order The Omega Nanny on Amazon Kindle Today!

It’s the book I had no idea I was writing… until I’d started writing it.

No, seriously. This story came out of nowhere for me. There I was, happily working on the next part of the Downing Cycle… when BAM.

Just like in Batman.

Thomas Whittaker popped up and would not. Shut. Up. Next thing I knew… I had nearly 40,000 words of Thomas’s story. I added another 25,000 in the next draft, expanding Kieran Corvey’s side of the tale.

I jokingly call this my tropey romance – and it is, it so very much is. I mean… we’ve got a single dad (Thomas) who needs help with his precocious and precious 6-year-old daughter. We’ve got a snarky sister who is desperate to set her little brother up on the eve of her own  marriage. And we’ve got adorable, spunky, wary Kieran – who needs the cash that Thomas is offering, and has been burned in love before.

Mmm, coffee….

And a coffee shop. That classic mainstay of all Romantic AUs everywhere.

Need more? Scroll down a little… and you’ll find an excerpt from the book. But first, the nitty gritty:

The Omega Nanny is a stand-alone Omegaverse story with an HEA mpreg ending. (That’s Happily Every After, male pregnancy ending, in case you were wondering.)  It runs 281 pages, and is available for pre-order on Amazon Kindle for $1.99. It’ll be available for purchase or borrowing for FREE via Kindle Unlimited on April 26, 2016.

(I also have a limited number of ARCs still available, if you can’t wait that long. Email me now, operators are standing by. Okay, it’s just me, but I’m not really planning on going anywhere today.)

And you’ve been so patient! Here’s your sneak peek of Kieran and Thomas, at the end of one of Kieran’s first few days of nannying… and it might already be too late for him to walk away!

Kieran took his coat off the hook in the laundry room, and stepped back into the room, so he could hear Thomas sing Jessie her lullaby. He had a nice voice – not particularly beautiful or strong, but deep and confident from having sung the lullaby for the last six years. Kieran took his time pulling on his coat, and remembered, briefly, the cold he’d felt earlier, and how that chill had disappeared the minute Thomas had walked in.

As if he’d been the one Kieran was instinctively missing, to feel completely at ease in foreign territory. Which was ridiculous – the entire reason the territory was foreign was because it belonged to Thomas. Thomas’s presence shouldn’t have made it more comfortable; it should have made it less comfortable.

All the same. Kieran didn’t want to go just yet. He lingered, listening, knowing full well that when Thomas was done, he’d come downstairs, and find him waiting there.

Kieran knew he should zip up his jacket and slip out before Thomas reached the end of the song. Play it safe and not give into the temptation to wait and see Thomas one more time before the night was over.

Instead, he waited, and listened as Thomas closed Jessie’s door. Kieran’s nerves tingled as Thomas came down the stairs, slow and steady, and Kieran could barely remember why he’d thought it was a good idea to wait. By the time Thomas crossed the living room to lean against the doorframe on the opposite side of the room, his gaze never leaving Kieran’s face, Kieran could barely breathe for nerves.

“You shouldn’t have left so quickly last night,” Thomas said. It was almost a whisper, deep and dark with promise. A line straight out of every horrible porno Kieran had ever heard about.

Kieran nearly jumped out of his skin. He stared, wide-eyed, and every single instinct that had been telling him all along, no, no, stay, it’s totally cool was suddenly in complete rebellion.

“I… what?” he asked, his voice high-pitched and uncertain, and somehow that was enough to break the strange feeling in the room.

“Sorry, I… I meant that Connie wanted to give you a ride home.”

Kieran let out a long breath. “Oh. Okay. Just…” He ran a hand over his hair. “My mind went somewhere else when you said that, you know?”

“Not really,” admitted Thomas. Sweet innocence looked adorably ridiculous on him, thought Kieran, and he was glad Jessie-ville was in between them. “I know I startled you.”

Kieran laughed, not entirely at ease just yet. “Well, that and one of the worst pick-up lines from porno history ever, yeah.”

Thomas’s mouth fell open, and he groaned and leaned against the doorframe. “Oh, God. I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I know,” Kieran assured him. “It’s nice of Connie to want to drive me home, but… it’s okay. I don’t live that far away.”

Thomas frowned. “I thought you lived on the other side of town.”

Kieran was about to shake his head when he realized what Thomas meant. Your parents live on the other side of town. Which they did. Which Thomas obviously thought was where Kieran lived as well. Which in any other circumstance, as an unbonded omega – he would have.

“I mean,” said Kieran hastily, “I’m fine. I can take care of myself.”

“I never doubted it,” said Thomas.

Kieran felt the rush of warmth over his skin again as the words hung in the air between them for a long moment. He was still on edge, just a bit – every muscle in him might have been warm and comfortable, sure, but there was something that stayed wary and cautious all the same. As if it was waiting for Thomas to spring, even though Kieran absolutely believed that Thomas wouldn’t move until the door had shut between them.

“Thanks,” said Kieran. “Um. See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” said Thomas, and smiled for maybe the first time since Kieran had met him.

He looked… happy, when he smiled. Handsome, strong, and friendly.

He looked safe.

Oh, shit, thought Kieran, and his resolve began to slip as the strange pull that urged him closer to Thomas began to take over, as tense and uncertain as a rubber band drawing them together.

There is no way you are going to stay impartial about this man. If you’re smart, you’ll quit now before it’s too late.

And then Thomas took a step closer – one hand outstretched as if to reach for Kieran, to draw him in. Kieran could already feel the way the fingers would curl around the back of his neck, gentle but unassuming pressure, pulling him in. Tilting his face up, reaching down for a kiss….

“Kieran,” said Thomas, low and so unbelievably open, Kieran could hear the unmistakable sound of longing in them. “Do you….”

The words almost bubbled right out of him – but before Kieran could say a thing, he pushed back on the laundry room door and shut it behind him as quickly as he could.

It was freezing in the little laundry room. Kieran stood in the dark, felt the cold creep on his exposed hands and face, and felt warm enough that he wasn’t shivering at all.

“Oh, Thomas,” groaned Connie, on the other side of the door. “You let him go again?”

 

Want more? Don’t worry, the wait will be over soon!

Pre-order The Omega Nanny today!

Making it Look Good (Literally)

One of the things that surprises me most about self-publishing is how much I enjoy all the fiddly bits. I figured I’d enjoy the writing and watching the book take off – I mean, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? – but actually formatting the completed book, adding in all of the front matter and back matter and making sure every page looks perfect?

I actually like that part. I like it a lot.

This week, that’s what I’m doing: taking the final, finished draft of The Omega Nanny and making sure it looks picture-perfect for when it’s time to upload on Saturday. (Amazon requires the final copy 10 days before release when you’re setting up a pre-order.) It’s all little, fiddly stuff, but that’s what will make the final product look awesome.

“Good design, when it’s done well, becomes invisible. It’s only when it’s done poorly that we notice it.”

-Jared Spool, American writer/researcher/designer

And it’s true. Everyone’s read a book or ebook that was might have been a great read – but was so riddled with errors that it was impossible to enjoy. (Everyone’s also borrowed that library book where a previous reader felt the need to correct every error.)

Trying to make a terrible book look good, of course, isn’t going to save the book. But a fantastic book, terribly put together, isn’t going to do much better, especially in today’s market, where there are just so many books, and therefore so many reasons to stop reading something that isn’t thoroughly enjoyable, on every level.

(And yes – I will totally stop reading a book if it’s impossible to read. I have too many books on my Kindle to put up with that.)

There are, of course, multiple ways of formatting ebooks. You can get down and dirty with the html.  You can purchase a program, or download a free one, that will do the dirty work for you. There’s websites that can even tell an author how to make a few tweaks that will generate a larger page count (which is important if you’re being paid by the page).

There’s even services where you email your manuscript off, and get it back later, all prettied up and perfect. (For a small, or maybe not so small, fee. Of course.)

I have to admit, I’m enough of a nerd to enjoy the first one. I’m pretty comfortable with Word, I know my html. I’m not going to be coding any massive programs anytime soon, but I can hold my own with the basic stuff. Coding a book? Piece of cake. Or at least a piece of cake I’m willing to tackle.

Actually… I find it kind of soothing. There’s a certain satisfaction in coding, or setting up hyperlinks, or arranging a Table of Contents so that it looks nice. It’s busywork, sure – but once it’s done, it’s good to look back and say, “Yup, that looks good, that’s one more thing accomplished.” It’s not fancy… but it does look nice and neat. Plus it’s something I can build on – it took a while to make The Country Omega look good on a Kindle, but I’ve found that the process is moving much faster for The Omega Nanny, and I think it’ll look more professional from the start, too. (I’ve redone the design for The Country Omega and reloaded updated versions twice now.)

The only disadvantage is that it does take time where I could be… oh, writing, for one thing. I’m sure there’s better ways of doing it. But for now, this works for me.

The Omega Nanny Cover Reveal!

The clock is winding closer and closer to April 26 – and I’ve got the most delicious cover to reveal for The Omega Nanny. R.A. Steffan, who designed the cover for The Country Omega, has designed a beautiful cover for my newest release, and I’m super excited to share it with you!

 

I’m not one for “casting” my books (that is, finding models or actors who match my characters), but I have to say I love the cover models Steffan found for Thomas and Kieran. I love how Thomas is looking right at me (and that open shirt collar! Hnnngggg, yes please), and I totally want to sink my hands into Kieran’s hair.

I particularly like that Steffan included the coffee shop background – because while I’ve never been a big coffee drinker (I have to add so much milk and sugar, it ceases to be coffee and instead becomes frappuccino), I love a good coffee shop. More to the point, I love writing in a good coffee shop!  For a while, I had an app on my laptop that basically played background coffee shop noise so you could pretend you were in a coffee shop instead of at home (or at work, or anywhere else that was sadly not a coffee shop).

Of course, I couldn’t write about a coffee shop and not experiment in my own kitchen with what The Coffee Pot’s manager, Cameron, serves her customers!  One of the drinks Cameron tries out is a molasses-flavored chocolate and coffee concoction. If you’ve never baked or cooked with molasses – it’s the super sweet syrup that makes gingerbread taste fantastic, and when mixed with warmed milk, it ends up tasting like a spicy, caramelized, super-sweet drinkable memory of Christmas.

(Fanciful? Sure. Accurate? Oh yeah.)

Neither Cameron nor Kieran can think of a good name for their creation – but maybe you can. Here’s the recipe, if you want to give it a try. If you don’t own a French press, prepare the coffee as you normally would, but brew it with the cocoa added to the grounds. If you don’t own a French press – and you’re only a sometime-drinker like me – they’re fantastic because you can pick up a basic one for under $15 at a local discount housewares supply store, it doesn’t take up a lot of space, and you can use it for other things like tea or cocoa.

Cameron's Chocolate and Molasses CoffeeServings: 1Time: 10minsDifficulty: easyPrint

2 tablespoons coffee grounds
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
10 ounces hot water
2-4 teaspoons molasses
1/4 cup half-and-half


Combine coffee grounds and cocoa powder in a French press. Add hot water, cover, and brew for 5-8 minutes. (Do NOT let the press touch the top of the liquid. It won’t disturb the brewing process, but it can result in grounds filtering into your finished drink. The longer the brew, the stronger the coffee will be.)
While the coffee is brewing, mix the molasses and half-and-half in your favorite large mug. (16oz is perfect.)
When the brewing is complete, depress the filter on the French press. Slowly pour out the coffee into the prepared mug. Stir and enjoy!

You can add additional flavoring – such as ground cinnamon, a caramel drizzle, or whipped cream (topped with a caramel drizzle and ground cinnamon even). You can also stir the drink with a cinnamon stick if you want to be fancy!

So can you think of a fancy title for the drink? If you do, let me know – and if I like it, I might just put you in one of my upcoming novels!

The Omega Nanny is officially on its way!

Exciting news – The Omega Nanny has a publishing date!  Mark your calendars for April 26, 2016, to get your copy of The Omega Nanny on Amazon Kindle.

Alpha Thomas Whittaker needs a nanny.

Single dad Thomas Whittaker loves work, his daughter, and coffee – not always in that order. Romance hasn’t been on his mind since his mate died six years ago. When his sister hires the cute busboy from Thomas’s favorite coffee shop as the new nanny, he’s just amused.

Until he finds out that the busboy is an omega.

Omega Kieran Corvey needs a job.

Kieran Corvey is newly single, almost homeless – and determined to pay back every cent his parents spent on an engagement that went nowhere. Kieran needs money more than he needs a love life. Being hired to take care of a six-year-old girl is much better than shilling coffee to thirsty and lusty customers all day.

Until he finds out his new employer is an alpha.

Sometimes you find exactly what you need when you’re not looking for it at all.

The Omega Nanny is a standalone Omegaverse non-shifter story with a HEA and mpreg (male pregnancy) ending.

The Omega Nanny should be ready for pre-order on Amazon in a few weeks, but you can mark the book as “Want to Read” on your GoodReads account now!

But before I start editing – I have to finish the section I’m writing for The Country Alpha. The book is shaping up to be SO much fun, and I’m super pleased with the changes I’ve made and the new characters I’m going to introduce. It’s been six years since Ethan and Antonio were bonded – Ethan’s little brother Jake’s grown up a lot since we saw him last. I can’t wait to introduce you again.

Enough dallying… I’ve got some work ahead of me. Keep your eyes peeled the next few weeks for a cover reveal for The Omega Nanny, as well as a sneak peek and pre-ordering information. And if you’re already signed up for my newsletter – there’ll be an offer for ARCs in the next few weeks too.

Have a great day!

Social Media Frenzy?

Every time I think I have a good handle on time management, I realize I’ve forgotten to include some necessary task. Generally, the task involves cleaning the bathrooms, making dinner, or emptying the cat’s litterbox.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy the tasks I’m ignoring – okay, I can think of about a thousand things I’d rather do than clean out the cat’s litterbox – but it’s just so much easier to ignore them in lieu of other things. Like writing. Or playing with the baby. Or having lunch with a friend. I mean… the bathrooms aren’t going anywhere. The 6-year-old is totally content with pb&j for three meals a day. And the cat spends a lot of time outside anyway.

One of the pieces of advice I’ve seen over the last couple of months is about maintaining a social media presence online – generally speaking, via Facebook, though Twitter comes up fairly often as well. (Tumblr and Instagram are a bit lower on the social media totem pole.) While the details of the recommended method of participating in those sites varies – the fact remains that just about everyone, their publishers, agents, and kid brothers, wants authors to be online.

Which is fine. I get that. I even get the difference between selling books (which nearly everyone admits a Facebook profile or page cannot do) and selling yourself (which is absolutely what Facebook does do, whether on a professional or personal level).

What amazes me are the number of authors out there who run not only a Twitter account… but also a Facebook, and a website, and a blog, and still have time to produce books every couple of months. (Oh, and some of them also raise children, have another part- or full-time job, and presumably do not hire housekeepers, cooks, or professional litterbox emptiers.)

I really, really want to know their time management secrets, so I can steal them.

My own solution to time management is based solely on how long the baby naps – and he’s never been the best of nappers. He started to cut down to one nap a day when he was ten months old, and he still doesn’t sleep through the night. (And recently, he’s decided that 2am is an excellent time to play with his brother’s toys, since his brother is sensibly sleeping at 2am and cannot defend them.) On a good day, I’ll get around 2 hours. On a fantastic day, I’ll get nearly 3.

On a really horrible day – like last weekend? One hour. And he wakes up so crabby that I kind of want to murder some dinosaurs and drive around in circles until he goes back to sleep.

What happens is this: the baby goes down for a nap. I gently lay him in his crib, whisper a loving wish that he have a lovely long nap, tiptoe out of the room and softly close the door.

And then I hightail it downstairs, turn on my laptop, get my water and the baby monitor, and write like the wind without stopping for about 45 minutes or until I hit a stopping point or until the baby wakes up, depending on the day.

Most moms use that time for dishes, for cleaning, for mental health, for making dentist appointments, for… oh, I don’t know. Whatever other moms do. I use it to get my characters naked. Hey, it’s a living.

I have to do the writing first. (The only thing that trumps writing is washing the dishes.) I’ve found that if I do anything else on the computer before I start writing… I end up not writing. And that includes Twitter, Tumblr, LJ… anything.

And when I do use those… I have to limit myself, or I end up spending hours on them and then the baby’s waking up and the bathrooms are gross and I haven’t taken anything out of the freezer to defrost for dinner and the cat? She’s not even speaking to me, probably because the whole house smells like litterbox. I can’t say I blame her.

So I get five minutes on Twitter, and five minutes on Tumblr. (Not for the whole day. Just at a time.) And I’ve found… that’s kind of all I need. I can usually get a queue running in that time, look at what other people are saying, mark out articles I want to read later. It works.

I could probably expand that to include Facebook… I’m not sure I want to. I had a Facebook, years ago… and I hated it. I deleted it that day that my feed was full of pictures of everyone’s lunches. (Friends, I love you, but I do not care about your lunch box.) It took me a few months to get the hang of Twitter, and even now I’m still only so-so with it. It took me about a year to really start to like Tumblr (but now I adore it).

I’m still not entirely sold on how much of any of that is necessary.  Whereas I’m fairly sure that if I don’t clean the bathrooms, I will inadvertently create new life forms, or possibly rediscover penicillin. If I don’t make dinner, my children will develop rickets from too many pb&js. And if I don’t clean the cat’s litterbox… okay, probably not much will happen that doesn’t already occur from time to time, if I don’t clean the cat’s litterbox.

It just might happen on my bed, instead of next to it.

Do you split your online time across various social medias? How do you decide what goes where?

A new story on its way!

I know it’s been ages since I’ve posted here – there are several reasons for that. One is that the baby’s nap schedule has gone all catawampus, and in mid-February, he decided that only one nap per day is necessary. (He turned about a week ago, so this was somewhat early, though not entirely unexpected. He’s adorable but a terrible sleeper.)

The other – much more entertaining reason – is that toward the end of January, I was bit by a rabid plot bunny, and since I was having trouble with The Country Alpha – for reasons I’ll get into in a minute – I decided to pay attention. I wasn’t looking to write a different story – but sometimes that’s the way it goes, isn’t it? Sometimes you just sort of stumble across an idea when you’re not even looking.

And aren’t those the ideas that always turn out to be the best ideas after all?

I started writing what I called the “Standalone Story” on January 20 – and I finished the fifth draft, 63,000 words later, on March 7. I can’t remember the last time I wrote that quickly, but I’m super pleased with the results. The book is with several trusted readers now before it goes into final edits in early April, and hopefully will be ready to post by the end of April, or early May at the latest.

The best part about writing my Standalone Story, though – I had so much fun writing it that I realized what was wrong with The Country Alpha. It wasn’t just that I wasn’t having fun writing it. It was that the characters themselves weren’t having fun living it. Their story was dragging, they were dragging, and the whole thing was just… long. Very long. And boringly long.

What do you do when the story you’re writing – the story you had in mind from almost the beginning – doesn’t work?

You take a breath, shove everything into a folder marked “OLD VERSION”… and you start fresh.

Which is exactly what I did on Monday, and now I’m over 20,000 words in, and I love what I’m writing – and I can tell the characters are much happier, too.

So the good news is that there will be a new story ready in the next six weeks, and the second part of the Downing Cycle is going to be much better than I originally envisioned.

The bad news? It might not be ready by August, when I originally planned for it to come out.

Not to end on a negative note, though: let me tell you a little bit about my new book, due to be released in a few weeks. The Omega Nanny is a fun, sweet, sexy, tropey story about a single alpha dad in need of a new nanny – and a single omega busboy in need of a new job. Neither of them is looking for a mate – so of course they find each other!

I guess that’s what accidental stories and love have in common: you always find exactly what you need when you’re not actually looking for it!

3 Things I Did Right When Self-Publishing – and What I Wish I’d Done Differently

After all, self-publishing is all about taking that first step up a very steep staircase….

I am way too new at the self-publishing game to really write a how-to for anyone looking to do it.  After all – I went into it knowing practically nothing about how it worked, except a few key basics.  (To wit: create a KDP account, upload the book, watch the sales happen, get paid two months later. Oh, the naivety of me.)

But I still want to jot down a few notes about my experience – which was surprisingly really good. I didn’t think I’d like the business side of publishing as much as it turned out I did.  After all, when you’re self-publishing, it means that you are the only one who is guaranteed to work for your book.  Any advertising, marketing, sales pitches – that’s all on me.  Thing is, I’m not really one to toot my own horn and I absolutely hate asking anyone for help, so the fact that I actually enjoyed doing any of this is sort of a shock.  It does bode well for the next time, though.

Here’s what I think I did right:

I didn’t rush myself.

Originally, my plan was to publish The Country Omega by Christmas. It ended up not coming out until the end of January, and I’m really, really glad I decided to push publication back.  By waiting the extra month, I gave myself time to make sure the copy was absolutely perfect, that I had included everything I wanted to include, and it gave me time to start creating a presence for the book – and myself – online.  I didn’t feel rushed – actually, by the end of the month, I was totally anxious for Publication Day to happen – but all in all, it was a very low stress time, which worked in my favor, because the learning curve for what I was doing was so steep.

And it was a pretty steep learning curve.  I mean – I’m a writer.  I don’t do graphic design for book covers, I don’t know how to format a .doc file for Kindle off the top of my head, I’ve never had to advertise something in my life. Heck – until a few weeks ago, I didn’t even have a Twitter account.  I was learning a ton of stuff in a very short time.  That’s a lot of pressure – and it was December.  Can you imagine the stress level if I’d been trying to do all this and deal with the holidays?

Giving myself the time to manage all of it was probably one of the best decisions I made.

2. I asked for help, and when it came – I listened.

Remember how I said I don’t like asking for help? It’s true, I really don’t. It’s why I tend to use the same beta team over and over and over until I’m pretty sure they want to drop kick me off a tall precipice. But this book – and its launch – was important, so I asked.  Far and wide.  Against my better judgement, sometimes – but just about every time I asked, I was rewarded with a “Yes!”

And something funny started happening… sometimes, I didn’t even have to ask. Sometimes, the help came to me, in the form of people saying, “Um, look, you could… do that… better.”

Some people, they hear that, and up go the defenses.  Same here, sometimes. But not this time – this time, I said, “Okay! Help me make it better!”

An example. I’m not a graphic designer by any stretch – but hey, I took photography bazillion years ago, I have a good eye for composition, and there’s a bunch of how-to websites online. How hard could it be?

So I made my own cover for The Country Omega. That’s it, on the right. I thought it was very nice, I ran it by a few people, they said kind things about it, and I metaphorically brushed my hands and called it done.

Until a friend stepped up and said, “Um, can I offer some advice?”

My initial instinct was to say, “No.” Because… well, I liked my cover. I was proud of my cover. And worse – I had spent money on my cover. Not a lot, in the grand scheme of things, but to me, it was the principle of the thing.

I bit down on that instinct, though. And said, “Okay, yes. Fire away.”

And, wow, did I get schooled. Turns out I broke just about every genre rule in the book when it comes to romance covers. And as a result, I ended up with what I think is a much better cover for the genre I was writing in. (That’s it, on the left.  Better font, better picture, better design that actually says, “THIS IS A ROMANCE NOVEL.” My cover? Murder mystery, probably. With a little old lady knitting somewhere. And it’s not even the right size!)

But there’s no point to asking if you’re not going to listen, too. I listened – and as a result, my book cover is better. My Twitter experience is better. My website is better.  All because I wasn’t afraid to ask, and then accept the help I received.

3. I figured out my goal, and only took the advice that I believed pertained to it.

There is a ton of advice online about how to publish a book properly. And I’ve read a huge chunk of it now. The thing is… not all of the advice applies to every situation, which is why I think it’s vitally important that before you publish a book, you figure out why you’re doing it in the first place.

Are you looking to make oodles of money, gather thousands of Twitter followers, and turn yourself into a household name? Are you looking for some extra cash to help out the monthly budget, and it doesn’t matter if you’re wildly successful?  Or does money not matter in the slightest, who cares how many people download your book, because it’s all about telling a decent story and proving that you can?

What’s your end goal here?  That’s not exactly the easiest question to answer, and you’re the only one who can determine what that answer is.

But once you know your goal – you’ll have a better idea of what advice applies and what doesn’t.

If you want that household name and thousands of Twitter followers – well, then you’re going to need to put in the time and money for advertising, online book tours, professional covers and formatting, professional editing services, and even paid review sites. There’s an old adage: You have to spend money to make money. It’s not far wrong, sometimes.

If all you want is to publish a book and money doesn’t matter – well. You probably won’t want to worry about some or even all of those things.

Most of us are probably somewhere in the middle. I mean – sure, who wouldn’t like to consistently be in the Top Ten Bestsellers list and rub shoulders with the likes of J.K. Rowling and Neil Gaiman and Insert Your Favorite Writer of Choice Here?  But I doubt all of us are willing to put in the time, money, and effort involved in getting there completely on our own – at least, not at first. I didn’t want to spend money on book covers – and look how that almost turned out. Now I’m convinced it’s worth it – and I know how to find them at prices that won’t break the bank of a newly published author.

But I would like to sell my books, so I’ve created a webpage and Author Pages on both Amazon on Goodreads.  At some point, I’ll apply to have The County Omega included in some of the pay-for-inclusion digests that are sent to thousands of readers, and I’ll look at different ways of advertising it and its successors as well.

Not everyone follows the same rules. I’ve got my online presence now – but not every self-published author has done even that much.  Heck, not every traditionally published author has done those things (much to my sorrow; there’s some questions I’d like to ask Connie Willis, who seems to have minimal online presence).

Just because one author has done something – even an author you admire and aspire to be like – doesn’t mean it’s the right decision for you. Don’t feel compelled to do anything you don’t want to do, or what you don’t feel is going to work for your end goal.  There’s no hard-and-fast rule to any of this. There’s only what works for you.

 

That’s what I think I did right – other than writing a good book, I mean. Here’s what I wish I had done better:

Create an online presence earlier.

This is really the big one for me. I waited until nearly the last minute to start creating my online presence – that is, my Twitter, this website, the newsletter.  None of it existed more than about a month before The Country Omega was released.

I think that was a mistake. One of the biggest parts of having a successful book launch is the “buzz” you create beforehand. I had very little buzz, in part because I didn’t have a platform from which to create it.

My inexperience in these things also hampered me. I’ve never had a Twitter account, wasn’t much interested in having one – but in my research, I was convinced that having it would be beneficial. (And it has been, that’s absolutely true.) But I would have liked more time to get used to the platform – I still don’t quite understand how to make it work for me, and I know there are things I’m completely missing there that would probably help me even more.

That’s also true for this website. If you’ve been here before, you may notice that the layout has changed. I haven’t had a WordPress account before, but I realized that it really is the best platform for hosting the kind of website I need. When I chose the original layout, I didn’t really know what I needed, though – now I do, and now I’ve got a layout that is better for me. (It’s not perfect – and there’s still things I’d like to do with it – but I’m happy with the changes I’ve already implemented, and this style will support what I eventually want to do – and if it doesn’t, I feel more comfortable with changing it again.)

All of this is stuff I could have been doing months ago -but I didn’t, and I wish I had. I’m happy with the way my launch went – but who knows if I could have made it even better?  And definitely, I’ve got a ways to go before I’m fully happy with my Twitter experience and this website. (Ask me again in a year, and we’ll see how I’m feeling.)

2. Research different options; don’t assume the first choice is the only choice.

I know this seems basic. For some reason, I had to relearn this one several times.

I had it stuck in my head, almost from the very beginning, that the best – and possibly considering my genre, only – way to publish was via Amazon Kindle. Now, I still think I made the right choice, but I wish I’d taken the time to look at other options as well.  I never even considered options that would have allowed me to sell a physical copy of the book, which I could have easily done and still enrolled the digital copy in KDP.  It wasn’t until I was fairly late in the game that I looked at companies that specialize in self-publishing – such as Lulu.com.

And honestly, that’s ridiculous, because I’ve been aware of Lulu.com as a self-publishing platform for at least a decade. But I was stuck in the mindset that in order to have my books available on Kindle – I had to work with Amazon.  And that’s not true. It’s probably easier, but it’s not the only option.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I went with Amazon. But I wish I hadn’t had my head stuck in the single mindset of “MUST GO WITH AMAZON.”  And I have no doubt that I’ll branch out with another book at some point in the future.

*

I’m sure in another year or two or ten, I’ll probably be able to expand that second list somewhat.  There’s probably half a dozen things I’m screwing up even now, and I just don’t know it yet.  But on the whole… I don’t think my opinion on the things I did right is going to change all that much.  I’m really happy with my book, with how it’s done sales-wise, with everything, really.  What more could a first-time published author ask for, honestly?

(Apart from the NYT Bestseller’s List, that is.  Hey, a girl can dream.)

Just what I needed tonight!

I promise I really am working on a much longer, more substantive post – but for now, I have to share this with you.

MMGoodBooksReviews.com reviewed The Country Omega….

…and loved it!

Click here to read the review (or click on either of the links above).  It received 5 Hearts – which is the most books there can get!

I think my favorite part of the review – which of course is all super complimentary and I’m going to be vaguely modest and not repeat it all here – is this:

When you start reading a story you can always tell which author puts their whole heart into what they are writing. This is one of those stories for me. I love the way this author can put together a book that not only fascinates you but draws you in.

I am totally doing the Snoopy Happy Dance right now.  And it couldn’t have come at a better time – I spent this morning’s writing time fighting with the second draft of my current story.  Not to worry – I figured out what I was doing wrong when I went to pick up my older son from school (driving is such good thinking time) – but I was feeling a bit down.  This has turned the evening around.  Yay for timing!