Lily Malone's Blog, page 9

RELEASE DAY | So Far Into You

October 22 is release day for my new contemporary rural romance
So Far Into You.

I’ve done release day a few times now and it is always special. It’s nice to see the culmination of so many months of writing, revising, submitting, editing, plus all the work that Escape Publishing do to prepare the book for the world.

I’d like to thank the people who helped me get Seth and Remy’s story to the page. They know who they are, but for the record, I’m blessed to have Jennie Jones, Juanita Kees and Kylie Kaden in my corner. Kate Cuthbert, managing editor of Escape Publishing had a lot to do with making this book better, as did its editor Belinda Holmes.

Four books down the track, it gets a bit tricky to think of new people to dedicate one’s book to… so this time, I didn’t choose any people.
I chose these dogs.

Jarman and Breeze… this book is for you.

‘More than enough dog for anyone, and too much for most.’

Finally, to the people who read and enjoy my books: you keep me and so many other authors writing when we’re convinced we should chuck the whole messy industry in … Thank you for your encouragement, your comments, your Facebook ‘likes’ and smiles; your reviews and your wishes. We write for you.

BUY SO FAR INTO YOU on all e-book platforms

Click here to find the e-reader link for you!

Chasing Chris Judd… and other news

C’mon… you’d chase him too, admit it!

Here’s a snapshot of my Friday. It’s a busy one, coming right up!

First, it’s a school day, so there are two boys to get into uniform, make lunch for and get to school on time. A complicating factor is that the youngest boy turned 6 yesterday, and he has so many presents to play with/look at/draw in/construct, getting him interested in something as boring as brushing his teeth and getting ready for school is gonna prove difficult.

D.I.F.F.I.C.U.L.T

Tonight I have to make a birthday cake for Mr 6’s party tomorrow. Plus, party loot bags. Mustn’t forget to make those. It’s also the local agricultural show starting tonight, which means there may be sneaky firework watching… but that will depend on the appropriateness of above-mentioned cake. Otherwise, I’ll be baking a new cake while the fireworks snap, crackle & pop.

We have a visitor! My brother-in-law arrives from South Australia tonight for a week’s holiday with us. Little does he know there’s a 6-year-old birthday party to contend with tomorrow. (And he thought he’d have peace and quiet… ha-ha).

In bookish news! My debut book, His Brand Of Beautiful (which incidentally I started writing the year Mr 6 turned 1) published in March of 2013 by Escape Publishing is Amazon Australia’s Kindle Daily Deal today. When I woke up this morning, it was sitting at no. 132 in the paid books on the Amazon charts… which made me No. 10 in Kindle ‘Movers & Shakers’ so I took this screenshot, because it’s pretty :)

His Brand Of Beautiful is 99c at Amazon for today only… if you are interested in it, please click through to the book here. I was told it was also the daily deal at Kobo, but I can’t see it on special there yet. If I get an updated link, I’ll post it during the day.

So mine is a busy day. My goal for the day (other than to bake a worthy birthday cake) is to see if at some stage during today, His Brand Of Beautiful can find itself in a screen shot close to Chris Judd’s new autobiography. We’re snuggling quite close: HBOB is 132, Juddy is 139. He was my favourite player at the West Coast Eagles till he defected back to Melbourne… where upon he was still a great player, just not my favourite anymore.

Whatever you’re up to this weekend, I hope it’s a fun one!

 

Cape to Cape Walk Track | Part 2

Here’s what I’ve been up to this morning. To celebrate a friend’s birthday, a group of us walked a part of the Cape to Cape walking trail in the Margaret River region. This is the second part of the Cape track that I’ve done, the earlier walk being in May from Ellensbrook Homestead to Prevelly.

Today we’ve walked from Gallows surfing spot, south to Gracetown past local surf and fishing spots such as Guillotines, Whalesback, and North Point at Gracetown.

Once again, the weather’s been stunning. The wildflowers are out and the bush and coast are superb.

One thing that wasn’t so much fun was spotting a Dugite on the track, about ten metres after we’d started the walk!

Other than that little bit of excitement… it was close to two hours of fresh air, sea breeze, and fun.

More Bat Fun

I wrote about my short story, Tar Pit Triage, a few weeks ago when it got accepted into an American anthology called Coming Together: Strange Shifters.
 
I was a bit tongue in cheek about it, and I’m still tongue in cheek because:

I can’t quite believe I wrote the story for it and
I can’t quite believe it got selected…
I can’t quite believe that apparently there is enough interest and involvement in this anthology in the US that it may well find its way into print as well as e-book…

Meanwhile, behind the scenes in September/October the anthology has been ticking along. My contribution has been through edits, and it now has a cover. Check out this puppy… (or would that be werebear/werewolf/werepuppy?)

All proceeds from the anthology go to Bat World Sanctuary to save the bats! So that’s kind of fun https://batworld.org/ 

The anthology is the brainchild of Lynn Townsend – more about Lynn here:

http://paidbytheweird.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/LynnTownsendwriter

 
So. Which good deed have you been doing lately? Saving any bats, anyone? :)
 

 

The Power Of Positive People

I’ve come home refreshed after another lovely Saturday night in Perth catching up with my writing buddies and beta reading partners, Juanita Kees and Jennie Jones, at Juanita’s place. We dubbed it ‘Hotel Kees’ this morning because we get so incredibly well looked after by Juanita and her family when we take over (err, visit) for a weekend.

Juanita’s youngest son Daniel gives his bedroom over to one of us, and Gav always cooks a feast for the evening plus the most brilliant bacon and egg toasted sandwich you ever did see (which makes the perfect hangover cure for a Sunday morning).

I am so lucky to have found Juanita and Jennie. It is a tough road, this writing caper. Lots and lots of hard yards spent on your own, in your own imagination, typing words on a page that you will then delete by the bucketload later. It gets lonely, and having folk you can talk books and writing with (who don’t glaze over when you mention turning points and character arcs) are worth their weight in gold.

Positive people are worth their weight in gold, I’ve come to discover. So my motto from the weekend is, surround yourself with the people who give you wings, not with those who set out to clip them.

Love you ladies.

LAxxxxx

Joining the team at Australian Rural Romance

Wonderful news this week to be invited to join a wonderful team of rural romance authors at the dedicated website for rural romance fans, Australian Rural Romance.

There’s a great team behind ARR, and I’m very pleased to call them all friends. Many of the names already at ARR are known to me, but some are new authors and I’m looking forward to reading their books.

Giveaway time at the blog | So Far Into You

Look at the authors I get to share a book birthday with! Three of us are West Aussies too – or ex-pats (me, Shona Husk and Nicole Flockton). These are Escape Publishing’s new releases for October, and So Far Into You is one of them :)

Thank you to my many friends and readers who have already pre-ordered So Far Into You. You cannot know what a thrill it is to have your support.

If you have a Kindle as your e-reader of preference, then you might like to know that So Far Into You is on pre-order sale at Amazon Australia, currently 99c. If you are in Australia but use Amazon.com for your book purchases, you should be able to snap it up cheap there too. If I hear of other etailers offering specials, I’ll be sure to let you know.

You can find all etailers where So Far Into You is available on the Escape Publishing website here.

If you’d like to win an e-book copy of So Far Into You, tell me what it is about Aussie romance and/or Australian settings that you love. You can email me your comment at lilymalone@mail.com with GIVEAWAY in the subject line, OR – write your comment below. I’ve got more than one copy to win… and I’d love to see what you love about Aussie writers and Aussie writing. If you already have the book on download, you can enter for a friend.

I’m Bat Girl, or maybe I’m Bat Fan

One of the brilliant things about being involved in a writing group is they challenge you to write stuff that is out of your comfort zone… I love being part of the Naughty Ninjas for just this reason, but it’s also kinda scary because… you know… they’re a bit naughty. (They do nudie runs at romance conferences and have been known to hand out penis lollipops at book signings… that kind of thing. When this happens, I tend to make sure I’m rearranging books on a shelf somewhere, all innocent-like).

Anyhoo, earlier this year Rhyll (The Lady Biest) posted in our Ninja Facebook Group about a call for submissions to an American anthology called Strange Shifters. In romance writing (for the uninitiated) there is a sub-genre called Paranormal (all the vampires, ghosts and angel/demon stuff); and I guess Shifter romance is a sub-sub-genre of Paranormal. Shifter is the ‘hero or heroine can morph between human and werewolf/bear/wolf/leopard…’ That type of thing.

I’d been watching a lot of Ice-Age movies at the time thanks to Mr 5 and Mr 7, and for some reason, I got inspired by Diego, the Saber-Tooth Cat in the movie franchise. And Diego inspired my saber-tooth-cat story. (Minus the smut because Diego wouldn’t do that…)

I found out yesterday that my 3000-word story, Tar Pit Triage, made the cut and will be part of the Anthology: Coming Together: Strange Shifters.

The beneficiary of my flash of Shifter creativity won’t be me. Any royalties earned by the anthology go to the Bat World Sanctuary! (Yep, this story gets battier). Coming Together supports Smut for Charities, and the charity for this collection is the Bat World Sanctuary. (https://batworld.org/) The editor, Lynn Townsend, said she chose this particular charity simply because “she loves bats.”

Lynn says: “Bat World Sanctuary cares for injured bats and homes ones that cannot return to the wild, as well as helping to spread awareness, prevent deforestation, and other bat-saving efforts.” Adding to all the complete weirdness of this story so far, Coming Together: Strange Shifters, with Tar Pit Triage inside is due out on Halloween!

How cool is that?

Sometimes it’s fun to step out of the contemporary romance comfort zone, and now I get the super ninja kick-ass feeling of being Bat Girl. Or maybe it’s the warm and fuzzy feeling that I’m a bat fan.

Or I’m just completely batty, but you knew that :)

How Kids Keep It Real!

It’s been a month out of the box, filled with bookish news. 

Today THIS happened for Fairway To Heaven!

There was of course, much squealing in the computer room, as I called out to my hubby and my kids that my book had reached No. 15 in the Amazon Australia store and Number 2 in Contemporary Romance. 

So then Mr 7 (who is almost Mr 8) said: “That’s great Mum, but how’s it going on Amazon US?”

Me: “Okay, I’ll check.”

And the answer is: 208,000th, but who’s counting :)

That’s how my kids keep me grounded! They’re good at doing that.

 

 

 

So Far Into You – It’s Here! 99c on pre-order for Aussie readers

Fridays are always wonderful in this house (#AllTheWine) but today got extra special. My new novel, So Far Into You, is up for pre-order and it’s now on pre-order sale, just 99 cents for Australian Amazon readers :)

This story begins in Margaret River and moves to the Adelaide Hills (much like I did, only I came back to Margaret River a few years ago). The book is very close to my heart because it’s set in two parts of the world that I love, and the bones of Seth and Remy’s story was the very first story I ever tried to write. (Not that you’d recognise it now…)

So I’m extra excited this Friday, can you tell?

If you’re interested, you can pre-order So Far Into You from these providers below:

PREORDER 99c special at Amazon Australia click: here

Amazon US click: here

And if you’re an Apple kind of girl or guy: itunes