Ros Clarke's Blog, page 12

The process has begun

It is something of an epic journey this time round, since I’ve given all my self-published titles new editions and new covers.

Tonight I’ve uploaded the new editions and new covers of The Tycoon’s Convenient Wife, Reckless Runaway at the Racecourse, and Twelve Days at Smashwords. It was somewhat more traumatic than usual because Smashwords kept insisting that I had not included the phrase ‘Smashwords Edition’ on my copyright page. Which I had. Anyway, it is all sorted now. I have to wait for the new files to be checked before they will be uploaded to the Premium Catalog, from which they will be distributed to B&N, Apple, Kobo, Sony et al. It could be a couple of days or even a couple of weeks before you’ll see the new covers everywhere.

Tomorrow’s task is to format the final version of Flirting With The Camera, add the back matter, write the blurb and then upload that to Smashwords and Amazon. Once it’s gone live at Amazon, I’ll add the link to the files of the new editions of the other books and upload those to Amazon. Still with me? Not sure I am! I have a list. It goes into double figures.

I’ve decided to set The Tycoon’s Convenient Wife to be permanently free. It’s free at Smashwords now and that should percolate into other sites soon. It will probably take longest at Amazon, since they will only set it to free in response to that price elsewhere.

After that, I’ll have the fun of sending out Kickstarter rewards. Some people are getting personalised copies of the ebook, so I need to add in ‘signature’ pages with a message for them. I’ll also need to format it for printing, since some people chose that Kickstarter reward level. If it goes well, I’m thinking of bundling some of the books into a print anthology. Hopefully that will be more cost-effective than printing the individual books. And since they’re short, it seems possible. We’ll see.

Oh, and did I mention here that I’m planning to enter this year’s So You Think You Can Write contest? It’s open to published authors this time. The only catch is that the entries need to be in by October 9th. You only need a first chapter to enter, but they’ll choose 50 entries to request a full manuscript from. So really, the whole book needs to be finished by then. I’ve written 12,000 words since Saturday. I’m loving it but it’s still quite a long way from finished. I’m still working on my Scottish short story too. The editor wants that by October 6th. Plenty to keep me busy, then.

Last chance to read for free!

Tom and Hattie are back from the copyeditor and proofreader. I’ll be doing the final edits in the next few days and it should be on sale sometime next week.

So, I’ll be taking the unedited version down from this website on Saturday. If you’ve been reading and want to know how it finishes, this is your last chance to do so without buying the book.

This week’s news

I had an email from the proofreader this morning to say that she’s finished but she wants to leave it for a day and read through it again with fresh eyes before she sends it back to me. She also said that she enjoyed the book and was glad it had a happy ending! So I am still on course to get it on sale by the end of this month, or even a little bit sooner.

I have been toying with an idea for a book that I want to submit to Mills and Boon. I don’t think it would suit Entangled because it’s a ‘proper’ sheikh book – desert sand and men in robes and lots of unpronounceable names. It’s a bit darker and angstier than my Indulgences, too. Anyway, on Saturday I discovered that this year, published authors are eligible for the So You Think You Can Write competition. The first chapter has to be submitted by October 9th, but the whole manuscript has to be ready to go very soon after that if you get through to the second round. So I have been writing furiously – 7,000 words in 2 days. I think it’s worth it, though, because it can speed up the acquisition process a lot. All the first chapters get read in a month and 50 entrants are asked to submit their manuscript, with the winner chosen in December. Last year I think 7 or 8 manuscripts were bought through the competition. And you’re still able to submit through the normal channels afterwards, with a proper partial and synopsis, so you haven’t lost anything.

I love my heroine. Malaika is a geeky Arabic princess who bullied her father into letting her attend college and now she teaches at the local girls’ school. She is the perfect person for the role of traitorous spy that I have given her. And her hero? Well, Salim is the ultimate playboy sheikh, who has suddenly been thrust into the heart of his father’s complex political machinations and doesn’t really have a clue what he’s doing. Poor boy.

Review of the week

I know I’ve said before that I want to start reviewing more again and Liz’s post has prompted me to actually do it. My plan, such as it is, is to post one review every week. It won’t necessarily be the best or worst book I read that week, just the one I want to talk about. I read quite a lot of backlist titles as well as newer books, so it won’t always be a book that everyone else is talking about. In fact, it probably won’t be. I’m not in the business of accepting review copies, so you’ll know it’s a book I paid for (or downloaded for free if it happens to be on offer). I’m also not in the business of reviewing authors, only books.

What I’ve read this week:

The Wedding Dress Diaries by Aimee Carson (this is a freebie M&B novella)

Scandal in the Regency Ballroom (includes No Place for a Lady and Not Quite A Lady) by Louise Allen

Faking It to Making It by Ally Blake

The Ruin of a Rogue by Miranda Neville

Lost to the Desert Warrior by Sarah Morgan

So, here goes with this week’s pick for a review:

Author: Ally Blake

Publisher: Mills and Boon Modern.* It is RIDICULOUS that the kindle versions of M&B books don’t have workable tables of contents.

Date: 2013

Cover Art

 

I like both covers. I think the format of the UK covers is stronger, since it avoids the type getting hidden in the picture. I also like that the author names are bigger than the titles.  The ‘to’ on the US cover is all but lost as is the author’s name. But both covers capture the feel of the book and the characters reasonably well.

Hero: Nate Mackenzie. Aka Studmuffin33, sorry NJM. Studmuffin33 is the one she doesn’t pick. Because, oh yes, this is an online dating agency book. Nate needs a wedding date, for a wedding his sisters aren’t invited to, in order to get his sisters off his back. No, I don’t know why either. Nate’s father died when he was young and, because he was The Man Of The Family (he has 4 sisters and no brothers), he had to deal with Too Many Emotions at an early age. So now he doesn’t want any more emotions. Because that’s how it works.

Heroine: Saskia Bloom. Sassy statistician. No, really. She and her friend run a company which makes  infographics. I thought that was quite a cool job, actually. She’s been hired by the dating website to make  them an infographic, and apparently this entails setting up a profile and going on a date. No, I don’t know why. Anyway, she passes over Studmuffin33, in favour of NJM. And, well, the rest of the plot is contained within the title of the book. They fake their relationship for a bit. And then it stops being fake. Nate freaks out. And then he gets over himself. Cue happy ending.

Other: Gabe, Nate’s business partner, who I think was the hero of a previous book I haven’t read. Nate’s sisters, who merged into one. Saskia’s business partner Lissy who has a brief fling with Bamford, a computer geek who is one of Nate’s clients. And Ernest the dog who likes Oreos.

Marriage: Not Nate and Saskia’s.

Enjoyment factor: I enjoyed a lot of this. Nate and Saskia are good people and fun to spend time with. It’s a fairly standard buttoned-up guy meets slightly-out-there heroine and learns to relax a bit. I didn’t really buy into the reason for Nate’s emotional blinkers. I did believe in Saskia’s previous disastrous relationships and I could see how the kind of person she is would lead her into the kind of conflict in the book. I didn’t like Bamford at all – which is to say, I didn’t like him as a person, but more, I didn’t like the role he had in the book. In fact, I didn’t think he needed to be in the book at all. I couldn’t see what he added to it.

Epilogue: Yes, though I’m not sure why it wasn’t just the last scene of the last chapter. It’s a cute scene but it doesn’t do anything much. No marriage, no babies. They haven’t even moved in together.

*So I had this whole spiel about Modern Tempted, aka RIVA, aka Modern Heat, aka Harlequin Kiss. Seriously, pick a name and stick with it. But it turns out this was published as Modern in the UK and Presents in the US, which undermines all my points. It definitely read Tempted to me. I do love the over-the-top ridiculousness and intensity of Modern/Presents, but these books tend to be a little bit more normal and fun, and sometimes that’s what I want in my reading. For my take on what distinguishes these line, see here. Since I wrote that post, Mills and Boon/Harlequin have managed to co-ordinate the UK and US releases of their books and I think they now use the same titles, but I could be wrong about that. It’s always safer to check.

New covers, new title, new everything!

I really love the bright, fresh colours and hopefully they also have easier text for reading in thumbnail size. I’m happy to have everything with a consistent look and I think it will help to have the word ‘romance’ on the cover for attracting potential new readers.

What do you think of the new look covers? They’ll be rolling out in the next couple of weeks in preparation for the launch of Tom and Hattie.

Coming soon!

I finished the content edits on Lying for the Camera last night and it’s now safely in the hands of the copyeditor and proofreader. These are two separate processes but I have hired the same person to do both. Hopefully that will work okay. She anticipates getting it back to me in about 10 days. During that time, I’ll make sure I’ve got everything else in order – the final version of the cover, the back matter, the table of contents. It’s a while since I formatted my own ebooks so I want to remind myself how all of that works. But all being well, it should be going on sale in the last week of September.

And, to celebrate, I am re-launching ALL my self-published books. They will all be getting new covers – I want to have a more consistent look across all the books. I’m also going to do some minor edits of things that people have pointed out. The ginger kitten from Reckless Runaway at the Racecourse is going to have to decide once and for all whether it is male or female, for example. And my American characters in Twelve Days will no longer say ‘bloke’ or ‘biro’. Another thing which I’m going to look into is making a print version available. I can’t afford to do a traditional print run and print-on-demand books tend to be expensive. So what I’m wondering about is an anthology: Reckless Runaway at the Racecourse, The Tycoon’s Convenient Wife, and Lying for the Camera all in one volume. If that comes in at a reasonable price, then I’ll do it. I need to do a print version of Lying for the Camera for some of my Kickstarter backers, but that will be a limited edition and not for general sale.

So these are exciting times. I’ve been thinking about the year ahead and making plans. I’ve got a short story that I’ll finish writing this month and send for editing in October, to publish in early November. My next title from Entangles is due out in December. I’m aiming to write two more books and a couple more short stories by next summer, but I’m still thinking about which to self-publish, which to submit to Entangled, and whether to try again with Mills and Boon. I’ve got a linked series of three books in mind which I think might suit Entangled. And another standalone which is definitely for self-publishing. But there are other ideas percolating that I’d like to try for M&B. Watch this space!

Most highly-favoured lady

Or, as we used to sing, Most Highly-Flavoured Gravy.

This photo is a few years old, but I came across it again today and it makes me laugh so much, I thought I’d share it with you all:

Imaginary lives

One of the first week tasks in the Artist’s Way is to come up with five imaginary lives. Things you might have done, people you might have been, if there were no limits and no fear. Lives that are more fun than your real life. Here are mine:

Stictly Come Dancing celebrity learning to dance with Robin and wearing twirly sequinned dresses.

An artist living on the Isle of Muck, swimming in the cold sea and painting glorious colourful pictures of light.

A lecturer with no admin, marking or stress, just enjoying the buzz of teaching students who long to learn. In this one, I wake up excited every day.

I’m married to a man who makes my heart dance.

A great chef, playing with taste, texture and colour to create love on a plate.

I already wrote two of these into books, although I never finished the dancing story. I’m writing another at the moment. And all of my heroines end up with men who make their hearts dance.

What would be your imaginary lives?

What’s been on my summer kindle

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these and I have been reading up a storm. Here are some of the highlights:



The Ruin of a Rogue by Miranda Neville

I do love a bad boy turning good and this is a classic example of the trope. I loved Marcus and Anne and almost everything about their story. Perhaps not quite my favourite Neville but certainly in my top three.



Against the Tide by Elizabeth Camden

Probably the best Christian romance novel I’ve read. It’s about opium smuggling in 19th century America, so it gets bonus points for the unusual setting. The heroine is terrific, but the hero wasn’t the easiest to warm to. There are some issues with the ending, I think, but on the whole I enjoyed this a lot.



Road to Rouen by Ben Hatch

Family travelogue. Amusing in parts. Mostly the lesson is: don’t take your family on a road trip around France.



The Story Guy by Mary Ann Rivers

Everything which is to be said about this has already been said four times over. I liked it but didn’t love it.



Imprisoned by a Vow by Annie West

M&B Modern. I like Annie West’s books a lot and this was her at her best, I think. I don’t remember reading a heroine like Leila before.



The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

People had been recommending this to me for months and eventually someone just gave it to me and told me to read it, so I did. And loved it. A feminist lesbian professor at Syracuse University describes the trainwreck of her conversion to Christianity. Brutally honest and astonishingly frank, she reflects on her history in insightful and challenging ways. Also, I am now thinking of changing my name to Ros Champagne Clarke. Seriously, isn’t that so cool?

What have you been reading lately? Anything you’d recommend?

The Artist’s Way

I’ve been meaning to try this for a while now (it was even in my list of 38 Things To Do last year) but for various reasons (THESIS, THESIS, THESIS) I haven’t had chance until now. I’m doing it with a friend, so we can check in every week and talk about how it’s going.

The Artist’s Way is a 12 week course designed to help you unblock your creativity. It’s not just for painting/drawing kinds of artists, it’s for anyone who is creative in any way. So that’s everyone. It’s not about techniques or goals or being good at things. It’s about learning to have fun, let go and see where that takes you. I’m excited and a bit scared. I think it will be good but maybe a bit scary at times (there’s a No Reading Week which sounds horrendous!).

For now, I’ve done my first Morning Pages and I’m thinking about what to do for my first Artist’s Date.

I’ll let you know how I get on!