Christine Rains's Blog, page 21

Word Witch Wednesday - The Quest to Perfect the Newsletter

I've been trying different strategies when it comes to my newsletter (NL), and I'm forever researching them. I've even signed up for dozens of them. Probably more than 100. Yeah, you can imagine how my inbox looks!
But it is very helpful in seeing how authors set up their NLs, what works and what doesn't, and what motivates subscribers to keep reading.
Here's the info I gathered:- authors who send out their NLs daily offer little more than "buy my or my friends' books"- authors who send out their NLs weekly have more exclusive content, but still are mainly just advertising books- authors who send out their NLs monthly (or less) feature the most personal content and news
- almost all authors offer something free to new subscribers- a few authors offer something for free in every NL while more hold giveaways- giveaways for gift cards get more responses than giveaways for books
- most authors only offer excerpts or first chapters when a new release comes out- less than half talk about what they're writing now- less than half have a NL and a blog- less than 10% of authors talk about what's going on their lives
My preferences as a reader:- I don't like the daily NLs, and I especially don't like the NLs where the author is advertising another author's books and says nothing at all about what they personally are doing- I will enter giveaways, but only for books if I like the author's work- I read NLs most often when they offer something special or personal like their experience at a recent signing, a family trip, or a regular feature that isn't focused on books
What I have tried as an author:- I offered up a free ebook to new subscribers. It's not much of a motivator, and I would prefer to sell the book instead. After my poll on Monday, I have decided to write a short story that will be exclusive to new subscribers.- I've tried drip campaigns (a series of NLs sent every week). Subscribers do not respond better or worse to them. I get the same amount of opens and clicks for the campaigns as I do normally.- I sent out one NL recently that offered no giveaways or freebies. I had the most amount of unsubscribes I've ever gotten and my first spam complaint.- I've tried numerous NL swaps. They did not bring me more subscribers or sales.
What I am going to try this year:- I will pull back on how frequently I send out my NL. My next one comes out on March 17th, and then I won't send out another until mid-April. Monthly (except on special occasions) seems like the best way to go for me.- I will try to always have a giveaway or freebie involved, whether it be one I'm participating in or a link to an author's I like.- I want to add in personal news and/or a feature, but I still want to keep the NL separate from my blog. They are not the same thing, and I won't treat them as such.
Do you have a newsletter? Do you subscribe to any? What do you like and don't like about them?

I Want To Know Your Opinion

Do you subscribe to authors' newsletters? Why? What motivates you to sign up?
I've been striving to increase my subscribers. Giveaways attract new readers, but then there's a bunch of unsubscribes when they don't win or if you don't offer another giveaway in the next newsletter.
Right now, I offer new subscribers an ebook (The 13th Floor Complete Collection) as a thank you for signing up. I'd prefer to have readers buy the book, though.
I've been considering writing a new short story or novelette and offering that exclusively to new subscribers. I want my readers to know they're special, and I hope this lets them know they are. That way they'll stick around.
I want to know what you think. Would a new and exclusive story motivate you to sign up for an author's newsletter? What do you think is the best way to appeal to subscribers?

Great opportunity for promoting!

I'm part of a fantastic group called Fantasy Book Giveaways along with two talented authors, T.F. Walsh and A.A. Chamberlynn. Every month or so, we organize and host a sale and giveaway for paranormal romance and urban fantasy authors. It's a marvelous way to promote your book and it's free! We have a huge combined audience, and the more authors that participate, the more readers we can reach.
This month is our Get Lucky! book fair. We're featuring books that are in Kindle Unlimited. If you're interested, pop on over and sign up.
I'll remind you later this month about the event so you can enter to win the big prize bundle of books!

#IWSG for March 2017

The Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG) is the brilliant idea of Alex J. Cavanaugh. The purpose of the group is to share doubts and insecurities and to encourage one another. Please visit the other participants and share your support. A kind word goes a long way.

This month's awesome co-hosts are: Tamara Narayan, Patsy Collins, M.J. Fifield, and Nicohle Christopherson!

IWSG Question of the Month: Have you ever pulled out a really old story and reworked it? Did it work out?

I keep all my old stories. On occasion, I'll go back and read one, and most of the time I come away laughing or stunned. It is shocking how far I've come writing-wise. Some of those old ones are really, REALLY bad. But I keep them around just in case I ever do want to rewrite one or take an idea from it for something else.

I have one character that has been with me for over a decade. I wrote a trilogy for her many years ago and queried agents with it. I had no idea how to market myself properly, and so it didn't get picked up. Plus the writing was not as strong as it could have been.

This character would not leave my head. A few years ago, I started to rewrite the trilogy. I couldn't get it right. I tried a half dozen different beginnings, but nothing was clicking. So I pushed it aside again.

She's still with me. I have a new idea for her. One I think will work. She'll have to get into the queue with my other stories, though. Yet I believe she's strong enough to wait around. Maybe not quite so patient, but she's going to make certain I write her story eventually!

Lazy Monday post

Yup, feeling lazy today. I'll see you on Wednesday for the IWSG!

 
 

RPGs & Writing - guest post by Steven Arellano Rose Jr.

RPGs: Child’s Play We Writers Still PlayBy Steven Arellano Rose, Jr.
Many of us speculative fiction writers have been playing RPGs (role playing games) since as far back as kindergarten. However, the RPGs we played at that early age weren’t necessarily card, board or video games. Many of them were live action RPGs (also known as LARPs). Like other RPGs, LARPs involve players assuming the roles of a game’s characters. Unlike other RPGs, they involve the players physically acting out the characters and their situations.
Many gaming groups go to parks and act out their favorite fantasy, sci fi or even horror characters (zombies have become popular for this type of gaming). This form of activity, LARP, contains structured plots and rules where players are rewarded points when meeting certain challenges. But, because these are role playing games, the plots are often not fixed but are continuously developing by the players and their characters’ actions and decisions. Well, perhaps minus the game point system, many of us have been playing RPGs of this sort since as early as age five.
 Before we reached teenage-hood when we would get more freedoms, our world was that of books, TV, movies and video games. And so we mimicked the characters of those medias. It wasn’t enough to simply watch them on screen or even maneuver them on it by way of a gamepad. We wanted to participate in the adventures of our favorite characters of science fiction and fantasy because we got tired of the everyday world of school and home controlled by adults. So we played LARPs. This was common with all us kids. The only difference between us writers of speculative fiction and other grownups today is that we never stopped playing out these childhood fantasies. We never stopped playing RPGs.
All that said, my first experience with LARPs that I can remember was when I was around five or six back in the ‘70s. I, my brother and friends would engage in our active fantasies of super hero adventures, especially Batman which was one of our favorites. We did similar with Star Trek’s characters. Then when the first Star Wars movie came out we played our favorite characters from that, acting out our own stories and adventures. That was the great thing: unlike the comic books, TV shows and movies these characters came from, we didn’t have to stick to the storyline of a single episode or movie; we could develop our own stories, creating our own adventures and journeys into our imaginations.
As an adult, I play RPGs in the form of board, card, and video games. I don’t get as much time as I would like to play them and much less time for LARPs. Whenever I get a weekend void of any events or am just plain board with everyday routine, I’ll play electronic RPGs such as Facebook’s Vampire Wars, Spore, or Beast Quest, or deck-based ones such as Arkham Horror. Some people can never stop playing their childhood fantasies and so are die-hard players of these and live action games. But don’t get me wrong, I’m proudly far from immune from this Peter Pan syndrome of a type. That’s why I write science fiction and horror.
Fiction is, in many ways, RPG in writing. When I write science fiction or horror, I have to take up the role and so the mentality of not only my protagonists but also my antagonists and secondary or minor characters. In order to advance the story I need to know what my characters would do in given situations and when I make one character handle a situation differently than another would, doing so takes the story in a direction different than the one it started in.
So I’m a writer of fantastic fiction because I am one of those people who can’t stop playing RPGs of a sort. We writers and artists of speculative fiction are Lost Boys and Girls; we refuse to grow up.

Author Bio
Steven Arellano Rose Jr. is a freelance writer and artist. He published his first short fiction collection, The Fool’s Illusion, in 2013 and recently came out with a horror short story, “Circa Sixty Years Dead”, on Kindle. Besides horror and dark fantasy, Steven writes science fiction, movie reviews and computer technology articles. The following are Steven’s many other interests: treasure hunting for ‘60s and ‘70s pop cultural artifacts; jazz, rock and disco; video games; diet colas; history; mythology; Eastern meditation. You can catch him at his blog www.FarOutFantastic.blogspot.comor tweet him at @Starosep2.
 Links To Books
The Fool’s Illusion: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F785ZJQ
“Circa Sixty Years Dead”: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LHCFW5M

Doubling the Reviews, Doubling the Awesome Reads!

These two books are from the Fated & Forbidden series. A group of authors wrote stories which all took place in the same universe and share one amazing hook!
Dark Burn by Decadent Kane
Blurb: The challenge wasn't meant to be easy. They were set up to fail from the beginning.

Priya's the last of her kind...
After death takes the only family Priya has ever known, she ventures out to find others like her, those who catch fire and fly. But shadow hunters prowl the night ready to kill firebirds like her, and one has found her trail. After a narrow escape she runs into the kind of man she shouldn't want...a man with silver eyes as if the very moon has been trapped inside his gaze.
His help won't be enough when Nicholas finds her.

Doulzen is a shade by birth, shadow hunter by rite...
When an extinct white firebird flies through the night sky, fire blazing behind the creature, he knows he has to have it. Pulling the shadows in, he notches his arrow and downs his prey, but when he arrives to catch it, he finds a female running from someone instead. He promised himself he wouldn't be her protector, he'd get her where she needed to go, but when Nicholas shows up and takes Priya from him, Doulzen finds the mark that tells him she is his fated mate. With darkness at his heels, he will stop at nothing to get her back as his very existence relies on it.

When Priya and Doulzen find out each other's secrets, it will take a lot more than fate to bring them back together.
My review: Priya believes she's the last of her kind. A race of beautiful shifters called firebirds. When her Gran dies, she plans to visit family she never met in another city, but a man who is stalking her chases her away too quickly, and she is injured by a hunter. Doulzen is that shadow hunter, but he has no idea the mystery behind the creature he hunts. When he comes across Priya instead of his prey, he vows to help her in exchange for firebird feathers, but he might find more than he bargained for when her stalker steals her away. In that moment, Doulzen discovers she is his intended mate, and he'll stop at nothing to get her back.

A compelling paranormal romance that hooked me from the beginning and wouldn't let go. My heart went out to Priya immediately at not only the loss of her grandmother, but not knowing the anything about what she is and her past. Sheltered as she is, she's a strong and admirable woman. Doulzen is a sinuous hunter who must deal with finding out everything he knows may be a lie. The tension between him and Priya is sizzling. Nicholas is a detestable villain and puts the heroes in what seems like an impossible situation. Fast action, great tension, and oh-my-god twists.
Buy Dark Burn here.Find Decadent Kane on her blog.
Fallen Ashes by T.F. Walsh
Blurb: As the last of her kind, Fallen awakes in a holding cell, but being locked up is the least of her problems.

She's been magically bound to a cocky Queen's Guardian named Saber. Because Fallen is the last dragon shifter in Tapestry, she's on everyone's hit list... especially his... but she doesn't have time to die by his hand. Fallen has to find her life mate in four weeks or else all of creation in her world will be destroyed.

Saber never asked to be brought to life. He certainly never wanted to be hexed and forced to transform into a mindless shadow assassin. Exiled from the Kingdom, he must rescue his stepfather from the Collector to prove his innocence. Otherwise he'll be hunted and killed. But his plans are temporarily put on hold when he's captured, imprisoned, and bound to a mysterious blond-haired vixen with a major fire addiction.

With time ticking away for Saber and Fallen, will the two be able to come together to defeat the Collector and save themselves, along with the rest of the world?
My review: Fallen is the last of her kind and trapped in a holding cell. Bound by some frustrating spell to a gorgeous Queen's Guardian named Saber, they escape and flee. Their captors hunt them relentlessly as they try to learn to work together. Fallen has no time for the chase. She must find her life mate within four weeks or her world will be extinguished. Saber doesn't believe in her dreams and is determined to prove himself innocent of being exiled by saving his stepfather from the same villain that captured him. They must hurry or all could be lost for both of them.

This is one of my favorite books from T.F. Walsh. It's a unique premise of two parallel worlds; one our modern day society and the other, a magical fantasy land filled with both darkness and beautiful wonders. Walsh's lush descriptions of places and the monsters really bring the story to life. I especially loved she included the Hoia Baciu Forest. It's a haunting and fascinating place in Romania.

Fallen is a heroine that kicks butt. She's immediately sympathetic, and I rooted for her from the first scene. Paired with Saber, she's fiery in so many ways! I do love the story behind Saber and what motivates him. The tension between the two of them is hot, and I loved seeing how they worked with the chaos of their emotions with the conflicts going on. Noah is a villain you'll love to hate, and you'll wonder often if he's more than a match for Fallen and Saber. Tons of action and mystery. I couldn't get enough of this story. I ate it up as fast as I could!
Buy Fallen Ashes here.Find T.F. Walsh on her website.

Aliens? Find out when you read Abducted Life by Patricia Josephine

Savannah Janowitz’s perfect life was destroyed the night she and her boyfriend vanished without a trace. When she reappears a year later––alone––she’s a shell of her former self. Robbed of her popularity and her boyfriend, she has no memory of what happened to her. Savannah struggles to move forward as strange, new abilities manifest.

Evan Sullivan never gave extra-terrestrials much thought until the night he and Savannah were abducted. While Savannah’s memory was wiped clean, he remembers every horrific detail. Constantly reminded of the experiments that made him less than human, Evan hides in the shadows and watches Savannah rebuild her life without him. But neither can let the other go.

When their paths cross, Savannah and Evan finally see a glimmer of their old lives return. As they face what happened to them, they soon discover they aren’t safe. There’s more to fear than what’s hiding in the stars.

Available for 99cents at Amazon.

About the Author Patricia Josephine never set out to become a writer. In fact, she never considered it an option during high school and college. She was all about art. On a whim, she wrote down a story bouncing in her head. That was the start of it and she hasn't regretted a moment. She writes young adult under the name Patricia Lynne.

Patricia lives with her husband in Michigan, hopes one day to have what will resemble a small petting zoo, has a fondness for dying her hair the colors of the rainbow, and an obsession with Doctor Who.

You can find her lurking on Twitter, Google+, Goodreads, and Wattpad. Find the latest news at her website or sign up for her newsletter. A link to all her books can be found here.

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Don't forget to get yourself some books to cuddle up with this weekend!

And if one giveaway isn't thrilling enough, Vanessa Morgan is hosting a ten book giveaway from the authors of When Animals Attack: The 70 Best Horror Movies With Killer Animals. My urban fantasy, Of Blood and Sorrow is included in the bundle.

All It Takes Release Day Blitz!

Happy Valentine's Day! I’m thrilled to announce Clare Dugmore’s dual-POV contemporary romance ALL IT TAKES is out now, exclusively on Amazon Kindle, and in paperback.

Title: All It TakesAuthor: Clare DugmoreGenre: RomancePublisher: Snowy Wings Publishing Add to your Goodreads to be read listBuy at Amazon US | Amazon UK
Description:All It Takes is one night to change the rest of their lives.
Graduating Uni, travelling Europe and buying her own place – these are on Megan Green’s to-do list.At just twenty-two, becoming a mother isn’t.
Fast cars, expensive clothes and bedding a different women every night – this is how Kian Murphy spends his time when not in the MMA ring. Pre-natal scans and birthing classes are not on his agenda.
After a chance meeting and passionate encounter, Megan finds herself pregnant with Kian’s child. But with a womanizing reputation, and a temper that often leads him into trouble, Kian is hardly boyfriend material, let alone father material.
Now Megan and Kian must work out if they have All It Takes to turn their one-night-stand into a relationship that will connect them for a life-time. ​All It Takes is a dual-POV new-adult, contemporary-romance about responsibility, love and discovering who you are in life.
Rafflecopter Giveaway: a Rafflecopter giveaway

Find Your Valentine 99c Sale and Giveaway!

Find love in a book!
Check out 20 amazing books all on sale this weekend only.

The 13th Floor Complete Collection is on sale for the first time ever! Six novellas and one short story for only 99 cents. Get hooked!


Six supernatural tenantsliving in a haunted buildingon a floor that doesn't exist.
Purchase links: Amazon * B&N * Kobo * Smashwords
Plus enter to win this awesome book bundle giveaway!