Erica Damon's Blog, page 4

Book Review - Mrs. Rochesters Ghost

I have to go with just 2 stars from Mrs. Rochester's' Ghost, I DNF'd this at about 30%, I could not get into it. The setting was nice but the characters altogether boring and nothing was happening. While I may read slow sometimes, I hate to not finish something but this one was just impossible to pick back up for even a few pages at a time.
It wasn't because I *love* Jane Eyre, like many low rated reviews cite - I have *gasp* never read it, and typically enjoy re-tellings of this nature. I did a beta read on a Pride and Prejudice re-telling that was one of my best reads of the year. This though never had any inkling of catching my attention. Poor Mrs. Rochester, I guess, who knows whats going on with her ghost.

Kindle Unlimited - Excite is here!

I’ve hemmed and hawed about moving books to Kindle Unlimited. I originally went with a wide distribution for Excite and my shorts after lots of research. Now it’s been out for a year and I did some more delving into numbers and results. When I put out my romance novella as Isla Ryder, I went straight to KU as that is more or less the genre norm, and it was eye opening. I did no more marketing for Twin Springs Ranch than Excite and it opened even better.

A year’s worth of Excite sales on other platforms don’t seem to be warranted versus the bonus I can get from the KU program. So, to celebrate Excite’s first book birthday, I have pulled it from the other sites and enrolled it in KDP Select, making it available for free to KU subscribers.

You can find it here (as always - https://amzn.to/3ozCAUA) and if you were on the fence before, maybe having it available in KU will push you to give it a try. I’m very interested to see how this change goes, and if I see some numbers going up, I will look at moving my shorts and flash over as well.

Do you subscribe to KU? Do you like it? I’d love to hear reader thoughts and opinions!

Do You Read Romance?

So, last week I made a vague comment about being busy with other things, and I promised to be more specific soon. Well, soon is now! You’ve seen before a brief mention of designing horse journals and activity books, and that is still going strong. But I’ve now taken my equestrian side and my fiction side and combined them.


Tomorrow my first equestrian romance novella comes out! To keep from confusing my thriller/horror audience, I will be writing and release all things horse-y romance under the pen name Isla Ryder. I won’t post about it much, if at all beyond this, here, but if you are a fan of that genre you can follow my page for Isla on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/IslaRyderAuthor) and/or join the mailing list (https://mailchi.mp/d07911f52f96/islaryderauthor)

Twin Springs Ranch is an enemies-to-lovers contemporary western romance and is the first novella in the Harris Twins series.


It can be found on Amazon HERE, and is free with Kindle Unlimited subscription.

Querying Update

t can be hard to stay positive during the querying process. Sometimes it seems like, at best, you get a form rejection. So often queries go unanswered and waiting out (and double checking) the agent’s timeline for assuming rejection is a tedious trudge through the swamp, only to discover...more swamp. Alright, so maybe that’s not so positive. BUT, sometimes you get a personal rejection—feedback! Yay! At least they have proven they actually made it past your query and read your pages. That’s a good start. You might even get a full request.

I got my first one for AtP about a month ago; they wanted it on exclusive for 3 weeks. I eagerly sent my baby out, and waited and waited for what felt like months... when I went and checked the send date...8 days ago. Oops. So I went back to waiting. After 13 days, I got an email. They weren’t interested. However, it came with feedback, like solid feedback. And while obviously it wasn’t all good, one thing they pointed out enjoying was my biggest worry for the story—its POV changes. So, after letting myself be sad for a minute, I was happy. They ‘got it’ even if it ended up not being for them. They read the whole thing and understood my intention. There’s that positivity again!
Now off to finish sending it to my agents list. I’m still being very strict with myself. I see no issue self-pubbing so if my short-list of agents are a no-go I’ll move on to the next step myself. Hopefully, though, at the very least, I can collect some more actionable feedback.

Keep at it everyone! It was my 45th (or so) query that got the request, and even if you aren’t down to self publish; there are always more agents to try.

New Excite Goals—and prizes!

xcite is going to turn a year old soon (December 1st) and I want to make the book birthday special! It is stagnating at 9 reviews, while it’s nice that all are four and five stars, I’d love to get the review and rating numbers up!
That is where you all come in, and where the prizes come out.

The first goal is 20 reviews. Ratings are great too, but a review can be as simple as a few words, so let’s shoot for those.
When we reach that everyone (you must be on my mailing list) will get to see my Excite vision board from when I was writing.
One winner will receive an ebook copy of Turn on the Light, my collection of horror and thriller shorts, and two runners up will get Excite stickers!


The bigger goal is 50 reviews. At that point, Amazon adds books to their marketing material, and how cool would that be?
For that big goal, of course, we have big prizes! Everyone (again—mailing list) will get a BRAND NEW story set in the Excite universe. I really want to share this one, so please help me reach this milestone!
One winner will get a signed paperback of Excite and there will be more stickers for runners up.


Remember reviews can be short—I liked it—is totally acceptable. “Fun story” is also cool. “Great read” you nailed it. See? Not hard at all!

Here’s the Amazon link if you are ready to help meet these goals:
https://www.amazon.com/Excite-Erica-D...

and if you haven’t yet, be sure to join my mailing list here to get in on the prizes:
http://eepurl.com/hpBfb1

Book Review - No Good Deed

I give No good Deed by James Swain 4 stars. I loved the first book in the Lancaster and Daniels series by James Swain and was excited to finally get to the second book in my TBR pile. I’ll be honest, it took me a little while to get into. I’m not sure exactly what it was, but until I hit about the 1/3 point, I’d read only a chapter at a time before putting it down. Gradually I got sucked in as the case widened from the singular murder and abduction that started Lancaster onto the case.

Once I was in, I was in. I enjoyed learning more about Team Adam and how Lancaster got involved with them, finding out more of his back story and the hints about him and Daniels. I’m not a big romance reader, but I could have enjoyed a bit more time with them together off the clock (we get almost nothing outside the case—which is fine, it’s a thriller) I think it could have rounded them out even better to see them in that capacity. We get to know a lot about Lancaster in this one and I hope future books will delve more into Daniel’s history, too. Yes—I will read more from this series!

The plot unfolds with biker gangs, parolees, missing persons and all the goodies you would want from an FBI thriller. I won’t say too much to spoil how this crime expands and explodes into something bigger than expected. If you want some good character building along with your crime thrillers, this series is for you. Looking back, I think if I had set to dive in more fully right off the bat I would have been sold even sooner, but even if you start out like me, hold and stick with it. If you enjoyed the first book, you will enjoy this one as well.

Book Review - no Good Deed

I give No good Deed by James Swain 4 stars. I loved the first book in the Lancaster and Daniels series by James Swain and was excited to finally get to the second book in my TBR pile. I’ll be honest, it took me a little while to get into. I’m not sure exactly what it was, but until I hit about the 1/3 point, I’d read only a chapter at a time before putting it down. Gradually I got sucked in as the case widened from the singular murder and abduction that started Lancaster onto the case.

Once I was in, I was in. I enjoyed learning more about Team Adam and how Lancaster got involved with them, finding out more of his back story and the hints about him and Daniels. I’m not a big romance reader, but I could have enjoyed a bit more time with them together off the clock (we get almost nothing outside the case—which is fine, it’s a thriller) I think it could have rounded them out even better to see them in that capacity. We get to know a lot about Lancaster in this one and I hope future books will delve more into Daniel’s history, too. Yes—I will read more from this series!

The plot unfolds with biker gangs, parolees, missing persons and all the goodies you would want from an FBI thriller. I won’t say too much to spoil how this crime expands and explodes into something bigger than expected. If you want some good character building along with your crime thrillers, this series is for you. Looking back, I think if I had set to dive in more fully right off the bat I would have been sold even sooner, but even if you start out like me, hold and stick with it. If you enjoyed the first book, you will enjoy this one as well.

Avoiding Burnout

As a self-employed person, especially one that works from home, it is easy to blur the lines between working and not. Am I on the computer to relax and mess around or am I checking emails and working on social media posts? Am I editing or am I chilling with some ice cream? I have always been a person with too many ideas. Writing both helps with that and encourages me to overdo it.

I write thrillers and horror here; I do some ghost writing, and I publish equestrian journals and non-fiction fun books. I love getting ideas for one or more of those ventures at all hours of the day. But I know better, and I am trying to be better. This spring I quit my horseback riding instructor/horse trainer job because it had become all-encompassing. I worked every day and was expected to be on call, even when I did go home. It wasn’t healthy, and I definitely burnt out. I needed to change, and it wasn’t easy. I took a full two months off of riding—at all. No riding, no teaching, no horses; nothing. Then I started back up in an amateur role. I now lease a horse that I go ride a few times a week and just have FUN.

I realized recently that I was getting in to the same cycle—for myself this time—but still working every day, at any hour, on multiple projects. I can’t turn my brain off for all the different projects, but I can set limits. I now have a ‘No Work on Sunday’ rule. The only exception being writing fresh words if inspiration strikes—I won’t ignore a blast of motivation. I have some social posts scheduled, as well as this blog, but beyond that (and maybe one check in to be sure there’s nothing important in my inbox) you won’t see me in a business capacity on Sundays.

I want my writing to work; I want to keep loving my job(s) and to do that means I have to take a break. Will there be weekends that I have an event to sell books, sure, and maybe that week I’ll make Monday my off day. But there will always be an off day, not just a few hours here or there. You can only be so productive. I’ve learned that the hard way and I am recognizing the path now and trying a different route.

Have you experienced burn-out? What do you do to stave it off? Sharing stories is the best way to help other people, everyone goes through it! It can happen at every level and in every profession—it can happen everywhere there are people who want to be better.
 

Book Review - My Dark Self

At first I wasn’t sold on My Dark Self by Jessica Huntley, but in the end I give it 4 stars. There were few typos/miss-used words in the early chapters that had me almost putting it down, but I kept going because I enjoyed the voice and was intrigued by the character(s). I’m not sure if the actual disorder is well (or factually) represented, but I am not really one to be bothered by inaccuracies if they do not affect my reading or engrossment of the book. The mystery was well kept up; when you think there is one thing, it leads you along, then tosses that thing you think you knew out and sends you on a new venture.

At times, I wasn’t sure I liked Alicia (I know she’s a psychopath, but I always like a love-to-hate character and I’m not sure I ever truly liked her) but she engaged well with the other characters and it was interesting how the POV shifted and kept us as in the dark as Josslyn was much of the time.

The final twist was well executed, although not totally surprising once we got there. I think some areas could have been expanded on in this quick read, but I definitely enjoyed it for that. Being able to pick it up and flip the last page in a short time frame made the dark theme fun and almost light reading-wise. Little things didn’t bother me because of the length. I love to read and write short, so this was really in my wheelhouse. I look forward to where the series takes us!

Book Review - Final Girls

*spoiler free, so may be a little strange if you have read it, but it’s hard to talk about without spoilers so.... here we go*

Final Girls by Riley Sager comes off my TBR pile after a long time to an unimpressive 3 stars. It took me a long time to get into this one. I only kept going because I had heard so many good things about it, and its twists. For the first half I kept finding myself thinking of twists that it may be that would really piss me off, but I pressed on. The pace picked up some after the two-third mark, but at that point I was more finishing it to see it through rather than because I was into it. I found I didn’t like any of the characters: Quincy annoyed me, Sam was kind of a bitch, Jeff was bland, Coop was kind of creepy with his ‘helpfulness’ and so on.

In the end, I supposed I didn’t *quite* see the twist(s) coming exactly. I had a good idea where it was going with the killer, and it got a bit of an eye-roll when we got there. Sam’s surprise was a welcome relief, but after the whole book, it didn’t feel like it was worth it, and felt kind of forced in the speedy wrap-up. Am I glad I read it? I suppose. Was it what I expected? No, I wanted more into the final girls; I wanted the story, not the conspiracy. Maybe I had too high hopes for it since it was littering my thriller pages for such a long time, and it was unfair to start with. Although my always-gripe, I know there was some mystery at first as to the authors gender, but without any research I can tell you Riley Sager is male. I did get one or two of those eye-roll moments where you basically get ‘ she breasted boobily’ please, men, for gods sakes please stop. That always tears me right out of the story. I can’t find the line right now, but maybe a few more early female readers could help.

So, I know other people really like this one, and don’t run off on my account. But maybe reel in your expectations—it may be a perfectly fine book, if that’s what you are looking for. If you think it’s the next big thing—I suspect you will be a bit disappointed like I was. If you can justify a whole book for a couple of final-final act twists, go for it.