Roxy Queen's Blog

Checking in!

Just wanted to let my followers and readers know that all of my Roxy Queen books are currently listed in the Kindle Unlimited program! So if you're a subscriber you can read these books for *free*!


Also, in case you haven't heard I am publishing Creature of Habit, under my penname Angel Lawson. This book is available for pre-order and will release on September 28th!

Happy Reading!

RQ

Frequent Flyers!

 



Frequent Flyers - NOW AVAILABLE!

Romance flies the friendly skies in this diverse collection of short stories from a talented group of best-selling and up-and-coming authors.

There’s something for everyone in this mile-high compilation – from a love story born in a blizzard to a steamy encounter spawned by a series of crazy events. For supernatural fiction fans, how about the tale of an airport that’s also a portal to another world… or a scheduled flight that takes a detour into an alternate reality?

From an unexpected trip that reignites a twenty year old flame, to a quirky liaison between a ticketing agent and an adorable doctor, Frequent Flyers takes you on a journey that will touch your heart and leave you flying high!

 




Eye of the Storm by Beth Bolden - Commercial pilot Captain Grant Montgomery III lives for the rules; flight attendant Tess O'Brien loves to break them. The storm brewing between them might be even wilder than the record-breaking blizzard outside.

 

"I loved Tess. She reminded me of so many people in my large Irish family, and I saw some aspects of myself in her too." - Goodreads Reviewer

Fly Me To The Moon by Bev Elle - Ticketing agent Jessamy Taylor has been in a dating slump that was exacerbated when she moved her sickly mother in. Truth is, she's never gotten over the quirky Dr. Griffin Sanderson whose OCD drives her crazy, despite his excellent bedside manner.

"I love stories about people finding each other again, and this is just what you got with this story.

Beware, you WILL hum the Sinatra song throughout, and beyond, reading this story." - Goodreads Reviewer



Unscheduled Departure by T.M. Franklin – Rowan Elliott is devastated when her boyfriend, Finn, tells her he’s moving across the country to take over the family business, and thrilled when he changes his mind at the last minute and gets off the plane. But then things get . . . weird. And Ro’s left wondering if her boyfriend’s really who she thinks he is.

"The entire thing kept me turning pages. I NEEDED to know what was happening.

Sucked in right from the beginning, pace was perfect." - Goodreads Reviewer



A Midsummer Flight's Dream by Kira A. Gold - Twenty years ago, he promised to catch her if she fell. Contains young lust, old books, and wild strawberries.

"This story about past love and coming together again later was lovely." - Goodreads Reviewer



Forced Landing by Angel Lawson - Nadya discovers her tiny hometown airport is the portal to a world she never knew existed, one with an ancient history buried deep within her bloodline.

"I loved the paranormal elements...easily could be continued into a series." - Goodreads Reviewer



 

The Friendly Skies by Amanda Weaver - An unruly drunk, a misbehaving volcano and a re-routed flight lead to one steamy night for two strangers who meet on a plane.

"The relationship between Simon and Cassie was paced perfectly. I half expected it to feel rushed considering the majority of the story takes place in a matter of hours, but it never did. The pacing was perfect." - Goodreads Reviewer




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Beth Bolden lives in Portland,Oregon with one cat and one fiance. She wholly believes in Keeping Portland Weird, but wishes she didn’t have to make the yearly pilgrimage up to Seattle to watch her Boston Red Sox play baseball. After graduating from university with a degree in English, Beth unsurprisingly had no idea what to do with her life, and spent the next few years working for a medical equipment supplier, a technology company, and an accounting firm. Now Beth runs her own business as a Girl Friday for small business owners, assisting them with administration, bookkeeping and their general sanity.

Beth has been writing practically since she learned the alphabet. Unfortunately, her first foray into novel writing, titled Big Bear with Sparkly Earrings, wasn’t a bestseller, but hope springs eternal. Her first novel, The Lucky Charm, was published in May 2014 and its sequel, Getting Lucky will be available December 1, 2014.

Connect with Beth Bolden

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Mailing List

Angel Lawson lives with her family in Atlanta and has a lifelong obsession with creating fiction from reality, either with paint or words. On a typical day you can find her writing, reading, plotting her escape from the zombie apocalypse and trying to get the glitter out from under her nails.

She is the author of five books, including the Wraith Series, Serial Summer, FanGirl, and Vigilant. She is the co-author of the New Adult Paranormal book, Odin's Murder with Kira Gold.

Connect with Angel Lawson

Twitter | Website | Facebook | Goodreads

T.M. Franklin started out her career writing nonfiction in a television newsroom. Graduating with a B.A. in Communications specializing in broadcast journalism and production, she worked for nine years as a major market television news producer, and garnered two regional Emmy Awards, before she resigned to be a full-time mom and part-time freelance writer. Her first published novel, MORE, was born out of a challenge to write a novel in thirty days issued during National Novel Writing month. MORE was well received, selected as a finalist in the 2013 Kindle Book Review Best Indie Book Awards, and won the Suspense/Thriller division of the Blogger Book Fair Reader’s Choice Awards.

In addition to MORE and its sequels, The Guardians and TWELVE, Franklin has penned the Amazon best-selling short stories, Window and A Piece of Cake. Her Amazon best-selling YA romance, How to Get Ainsley Bishop to Fall in Love with You, is Franklin’s first love story without traditionally recognized paranormal or fantasy elements. Although . . . T. M. is the first to argue that love is the best kind of magic.

Connect with T.M. Franklin

Website | E-mail | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Mailing List

Kira A. Gold is a textile artist living in Lexington, Kentucky. She has four accidental cats and an intentional collection of vintage marionettes. After midnight, she writes strange things in a blue bathrobe.

Her first book, ODIN’S MURDER, with Angel Lawson, is a New Adult paranormal twist on Norse mythology. Her solo debut, THE SCENT OF FLAMES, is a Young Adult take on Hamlet, set in Vermont. Look for her next play on Shakespeare, a seductive and speculative MacBeth, early next year.

Like her author page here: https://www.facebook.com/kiraagoldauthor for book info and odd thoughts or follow her inappropriate insanity on twitter: @kiraagold

Bev Elle is the author of sweet and spicy contemporary romance, women’s fiction and historical paranormal romance. A love of books--many already written, and those she harbors in her very active imagination. Writing is a passion she’s had for many years, but was unable to act upon. Bev Elle is the mother of three human children and two canines. She is also the lover of one husband. When Bev isn’t writing in her spare time after work, she is thinking of doing so.

Connect with Bev Elle

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Like many writers, Amanda Weaver spent her childhood telling stories. College steered her in a different direction and into a successful career as a designer. Several years ago, she picked up writing again as a hobby, to blow off some creative steam. One thing led to another, National Novel Writing Month happened, and here we are.

Amanda Weaver grew up in Florida and now lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, daughter and two crazy cats.

Connect with Amanda Weaver

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Pinterest

 

Audrey Exposed!

Hi readers!

Just wanted to pass along that Audrey Exposed will be FREE until midnight on Wednesday, October 8th on Amazon.

Pick up a copy, share with a friend, whatever you'd like. Just enjoy!

RQ

The AfterMath

Last week I came clean about pen names, the origin of one of my books (from fanfic) and the reasons I went about it. The following days were a little crazy. Lot's of anger, a little stress and many kind comments. Nothing I say below with satisfy my detractors. It will probably only make them angrier.

Frankly, with everything going on in my life I am simply out of F*cks to give on that situation.

To be clear, I did talk to my friend Sam (AG). She never saw my blog post as she was in the throws of an illness. I waited 3 days and confessed, linking her to all the drama. We talked. I almost puked. It was how we deal with things in our friendship because that's what we have. A friendship that goes beyond business and politics and who is better, Spike or Angel (Angel, duh) or Sam or Dean (undecided). If she feels like talking about it I'm sure she'll chime in when she's up to it. If not, all I can say is we're okay.

So let's talk about the rest of it. What happened from coming out of the p2p closet? Well, I definitely disappointed some people. Definitely. They feel betrayed and deceived and I can't take that back and I'm not sure I can apologize for something done with intent. There's some upset over the use of the word "Nasty FanFic Police," but...well, people show you who they are. We all make choices about our behavior and how we manage it. That's all I have to say about that.

People feel the need to address how I'm simply using the fandom to sell books. Well, yeah, sort of. I mean, I'd love for all my fanfic followers to buy my books. That would be amazing. The reality is a few did. I'm always happy when my books find a home (Many of the sales were for original fiction, like my book Audrey Exposed)and with readers who are enthusiastic about the work.It's a nice feeling--One I won't deny.

Hard Facts: Posting my message on ff.net via The Merman allowed me to contact several thousand readers (although about half of what it would have been if I had done it through my more popular story, COH). The Merman typically has a handful of readers per day (maybe 20, compared to COH, which has, looking at the stats, about 600+ daily). It looks like about 8k people have read The Merman and announcement since last week. As an author that's such an amazing and interesting number to see. It makes you feel good that people are interested in what you are doing (if it translates to sales, which FTR, are a small faction of that overall number). It's nice to hear from readers, positive or negative (most were positive) and one interesting result was connecting with over-seas readers. Again, as a self-published author, is really hard to do.

My Angel Lawson blog, which I only linked this blog and the ff.net announcement had more hits than any other blog I've written in a long time. And on here, there were more than 70 comments. Plus private messages, comments on ff.net and DMs there as well. I made about 3 new friends on GR and possibly 3 on Roxy's facebook page. I haven't checked her twitter in months so who knows (Sorry--overwhelmed).

So in the end do I'm happy I reconnected with some readers. I hope they found some books they enjoy. I'm relieved to have this off my chest because managing the two accounts so separately/secretly was really overwhelming me. How I'll manage it in the future I am not sure (Feel free to friend me on Roxy's FB--I do try to keep better connected there). I suspect any extra notice I've gotten will fade pretty fast? That's how it seems to work. No complaints. Just commenting. So those who think this is about some sort of financial end game really do not understand how this book business works. At all.

Thanks for reading,
RQ/AL

BTW, (yes, deplorable self promotion.) My short story Tempted: Tyson will be available on October 1st. .99 cents. Here's the cover reveal:

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Confessions: Fandom Style.

You know that question, if no one’s around and a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound? Last year I had a similar question, if an author publishes a book, with zero promotion, a cheesy title, cover and pen name will anyone read it?

Okay, okay, let me back up.

There are times as an author that you hit low points. Your books are just not really doing anything. Your readers seem sort of “meh.” You watch those around you gaining popularity (book deals and selling movie rights) that seems to come from some sort of wishing well of luck. Last February I hit a low point. I was tired. I’d written several books and published them. I had one out with my editors. I was bored. And frankly, as I watched another former fanfiction author gain a gazbillion (estimated amount) dollar publishing deal I felt defeated.

I’ve spoken openly about my thoughts on pull 2 publish. I’ve always been a bit middle ground. Back in my querying agent days I was told NEVER MENTION YOUR BACKGROUND IN FANFICTION. Instant rejection. It was sort of ingrained in my head that this was not the route to take. Keep the fanfiction in one part of your writing life and keep original fiction in another. Which really wasn’t hard. Once I started in the world of original fiction I couldn’t imagine turning back. I didn’t have the energy to immerse myself into a fandom like that (I even toyed with an Arrow fic for a minute before I went back to OF). For me, writing original fiction was where I wanted to go in storytelling. P2P seemed like the easy way out. Cheating. Lazy.

Obviously, my BFF AG feels this way, times a million. There have been times that we’ve disagreed on it to an extent. At some point after 50sog hit it big I had to say, “Whatever,” because Simon and Shuster DOES NOT CARE. In fact, they care so little they just keep doing it. I realized even more that this was the case this year at Dragon*Con and NYCC that no one cares as I passed booth after booth of derivative books. In fact, they actually slap this information across the front and stock it in Target.

Sigh.

Last year I found myself angered and depressed to know that what I felt was “right” was something the industry was more than willing to cash in on. Also? Increasingly, it felt like every P2P announced gained more attention and notice than the original fiction writers in our former/ongoing community. So what did I do about this anger and emotion? Well, I broke out my laptop, pulled up my documents and opened my favorite short story, The Merman.

What’s The Merman? Several years before, when I was in the middle of writing Wraith and FanGirl a friend asked me to enter a fanfic short story contest. 10k words, the theme was Boys with Boards. It was midsummer and if you know me at all, you realize I have an infatuation with summer, pools and lifeguards. This gave me an opportunity to write something for fun. Ten thousand words was the limit and the funny thing is that I could write about these characters forever. No, not Bella and Edward. I realized I only had their names in the story once or twice each. There was little canon. I based it on my imagination, my pool and the hottie lifeguard my friends and I had been stalking for years. The MC wasn’t Edward. He had another name entirely. Dialogue was taken directly from conversations I had with my friends. Was it fanfiction. Yes. Was it original fiction? Yes.

So hostile, depressed and tired of my regular work I cracked open this story that I loved so much and messed with it. I added 20k words in two weeks. I sent it to a beta (the only person who knew I was doing this.) And then I decided I was going to experiment with the publishing world.

If an author publishes a book, with zero promotion, a cheesy title, cover and pen name will anyone read it? Even better what if it was an erotic romance? Half-naked guy on the cover? THE most cheesy pen name in the history of pen names? I decided to give it a try. I told no one but two friends. One other author and one of my betas. They’ve kept my secret to this day.

I even documented my situation. How I felt about it (guilty). My fears (AG would never talk to me again). My hypocrisy (TOTAL HYPOCRITE). IF AG started talking to me again would she forgive my covers? Sigh. I’d toed the line for so long and it had gotten me nowhere but treading water in a pool of books. And in my heart of hearts I LOVED The Merman story. Loved it. I hated that it was out of my reach.

In early March 2013 I posted The Merman under another name and a fake pen name. I set up a Facebook and Goodreads account. I have a second twitter. I go to each of them about once every 3 months. I do not cross promote off my Angel Lawson page. This fall, once I finished the first draft of Wraith 3, I pulled it out the characters and wrote a second novella to add to the first one and published it a couple weeks ago.

So the big questions were this? What happens?

Did I sell books? Yeah. I sold books. I sold more of Taboo than I did of Vigilant. I sold more of Taboo than I did of FanGirl. It sold more with zero promotion. No advertising. No friends retweeting. No blog tours or Facebook giveaways. Nothing. In fact, it has sold double than those books did where I DID do all the blog tours and asked for reviews, and used my street team.

Did it make the best seller list? Not even close.

Does anyone notice? Well, two people noticed. They separately DM’ed to see if it was me writing it or was there a plagiarizer out there. Nope, just me being shady as hell.

So how do I feel now? Well, the world didn’t turn on its axis. I left The Merman up on FF.net because I’d added 20k words (now about 45k words with book 2). Will people hate me for being a lying liar and a hypocrite? Maybe. Will AG ever talk to me again? OMG I DON’T KNOW! (I’m too scared to tell her. Honestly, telling her is the one thing that has made me keep this secret for so long. I don’t want the blow back to fall on her because trust, she didn’t know and those P2P police are nasty.)

So there. I’ve confessed. I feel better but in about ten minutes I’ll feel horrible. At this point probably no one cares but me.

#2 & #1

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The weekend got away from me. Family, work, summer fun...it's all part of the balance. It's why I can't publish 7 books in one year (okay, maybe 4 but not 7).

Audrey's live. It got here a couple days early. The blitz is happening. The reviews are coming in...I've done so much of what I can do. Writing the book, editing the book, creating the cover, publishing...

Someone said the other day that writing the book is the easy part. Everything else is hard. A friend called BS on that. That friend, btw, has never published a book.

I happen to agree with the first statement. Writing the book is the easy part of being an author. We can write but we can't force people to read.

If you've read Audrey Exposed please do two things for me.

1. Write a review. Good, bad or ugly. I can take it. (it's not for me anyway, it's for other readers)

2. Tell a friend about the book via facebook, goodreads, twitter, tumblr...wherever you hang.

Thanks for all the support!

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#3

Release day nerves.

I'll be over here freaking out.

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#4

It's here.
IT'S HERE.
THE. BOOK. IS. HERE.

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The hard part is done. Audrey Exposed has been written, published and is ready. The IMPOSSIBLE part has just begun.

Marketing.

Oh hell, marketing! It sucks! I hate it! I'm terrible at it!

All of that is true. SO SO FREAKING TRUE. But like you care. You don't! You just want to read a good book, review and chat about it online. Same here.

Audrey Exposed is here and for a limited time will be .99 cents on all formats. VERY limited.
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#5

It's so weird when you finish a book. It's done. Complete. Ready to fly out to the world. Of course, there's that moment, as an author, you just can't bare to look at it one second longer. "It's terrible!" you think or, "What the hell was I even thinking here?"

That's when you walk away.

I start to reconsider...should I add this? Remove that? Should I alter this just a little bit? I'll even go back in at times and scan it over, sure that I can fit in something different. The good news is that more time than not I'm pleased with what is already there. That there isn't any room to fudge around.

Maybe that's the stubborness talking?

Either way, Audrey is complete. I'm tweaking typo's or word flips or missing words at the moment, thanks to some amazing beta readers. It's fully loaded and by the end of the week it should be live.

I can't wait to share this with you.

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#6

How do you separate the mental from physical? That was a big question I had when developing Audrey Exposed. Audrey and Graham are caught up in a psychological experiment, where pleasure is a good result, but not the primary one. Reduction of anxiety is foremost but once the anxiety is gone, pleasure will return. How do you balance these two?

Then you have Graham...he doesn't have an anxiety disorder. He has a job, but he can't turn on and off his feelings can he? His arousal? But NOT being a pervert is basically part of the job description. Where do you find a person like that?

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