You've always been a little twisted...

...and don't think we haven't noticed. Now, it's our turn. On August 1st, we were formally released from our contract with Cobblestone Press and our romance novella, Wicked Games, became our property once again. Since Harrell was working on a new edit for the story and Renee was working on a new cover (more about that soon), we thought we might use a new title for the piece, too.
 
Author Rob Lopez was the first person to suggest we re-title the story, telling us there were too many other e-books sharing the title's name. Turns out, he was right. For Amazon Kindle alone, there are almost fifty stories using Wicked Games or Wicked Game or some similar variant to grab some attention. We considered going with Dangerous Games but, wouldn't you know, that's a name that's currently even more popular with the writing crowd. Search the Kindle listings and you'll find over 100 variations on that particular title.
 
Finally, we picked Twisted Games, a relatively untouched title as far as e-book writers are concerned. (There's a line in the story where a character protests, "This isn't some kind of twisted game I'm playing" but we thought Not Some Kind of Twisted Game might be a little wordy for our cover. We considered having the character say, "This is some kind of twisted game I'm playing", but no one in the history of the world has ever admitted to such a thing. Although, honestly, we'd buy that book.)
 
Speaking of the cover: Renée managed to sneak a moon into the background! We've wanted a moon in our werewolf-based fantasy since it was first published. Yes, it is a cliche. When it comes to unknown romance writers (us) and the covers on their novels (see above), we embrace the cliche. When we researched the top-selling paranormal romances, the cover art displayed almost always embraced the cliche. It encourages book buyers who like shifter stories to slow down and take a look.
 
In the original photo, the woman wore a wedding ring and the couple were standing waaaay off to the left and in front of a yellow background. Through the magic of graphic design, and Renée's growing knowledge of Adobe PhotoShop, we now have the cover image we want.
 
We're excited to see if a new cover, a new edit, a new title, and a lower price point will help us find an audience. Not a 99-cent price point, as Rob suggested, but we're still charging substantially less than CP. We hope some sweet day to have a single review. (We actually had a couple of reviews of the tale but they weren't people-reviews. They were reviewer-reviews. Sweet but not quite the same thing.) Our last CP royalty check was under a buck and, under the Wicked Games title, the story's sales rank was disappointing. How will Twisted Games do?
 
We're about to find out.
 
Quote o' the day: "I intend to live forever. So far, so good." -- Steven Wright