Delta James
In 2020, I was asked to be part of a Daddy Dom anthology. That isn’t normally something I write, but I was flattered to be asked, loved the other authors involved, and wanted to be a part of it. The year before I’d had a spark of an idea about a romance book hero stepping out of a book to save the heroine, who was the author of a series starring the hero. Neither my publisher at the time nor Renee thought much of the premise, but Chris loved it and would periodically bring it up.
I decided I could use that as the basis for the novella and thus BEST SELLER was born. That anthology landed on the USA Today Bestseller list at No. 46! My novella was singled out in a lot of reviews, and I was overwhelmed at the number of requests to make it into a full-blown novel. So, I sat down, expanded it—adding more than thirty thousand words—and revised it (authors never stop wordsmithing!) and published the novel, which achieved best seller status in several genres. The little idea that few believed in had now made me a USA Bestselling Author and done very well for itself.
Here is where it gets interesting, and I give Chris all the credit. Chris always saw it as a series with the first book about Roark and Sage and subsequent books featuring Michael Holmes, Gabriel Watson, Felix Spenser and Eddy Chastain. The more we talked about it, the more I liked the idea and I’d had plenty of interest from readers in seeing those stories.
After talking it over with Renee, we decided to take the little novella that could, and turn it into the first book in the series. Only there were a couple of problems: (1) I don’t write Daddy Doms (for the most part) and (2) We wanted to call the series Best Seller Paranormal Mystery series, which meant the original novel’s name had to change. So I went into the novel and stripped out all of the Daddy Dom references and changed it to a straight up D/S and added another three thousand words!
Once I started self-publishing, I had more control over titles and covers. Renee and I decided that we would “brand” series with titles and covers that related to one another. For example, there is a very similar look and feel to the Tangled Vines covers and the names are all things associated with wine: Harvest, Corked, Uncorked, Decanted, Breathe, Full-Bodied, Late Harvest and the upcoming Mulled Wine.
So, one sunny Saturday, I spent three hours on the phone with Renee going over mid-year goals and setting the publication schedule, which would include the Best Seller Paranormal Mystery series. First up? What do we title them? As with the Tangled Vines series we wanted the titles to all relate to the subject. In this case, publishing. The result was ADVANCE (www.books2read.com/advance), NEGOTIATON, coming October 28, 2021 (www.books2read.com/negotiate), SUBMISSION, coming December 2, 2021 (https://books2read.com/submission1), CONTRACT, coming January 6, 2022 (https://books2read.com/contract1) and BOUND, coming February 10, 2022 (https://books2read.com/bound3). I am extremely excited about this series and am enjoying the hell out of writing these books.
I decided I could use that as the basis for the novella and thus BEST SELLER was born. That anthology landed on the USA Today Bestseller list at No. 46! My novella was singled out in a lot of reviews, and I was overwhelmed at the number of requests to make it into a full-blown novel. So, I sat down, expanded it—adding more than thirty thousand words—and revised it (authors never stop wordsmithing!) and published the novel, which achieved best seller status in several genres. The little idea that few believed in had now made me a USA Bestselling Author and done very well for itself.
Here is where it gets interesting, and I give Chris all the credit. Chris always saw it as a series with the first book about Roark and Sage and subsequent books featuring Michael Holmes, Gabriel Watson, Felix Spenser and Eddy Chastain. The more we talked about it, the more I liked the idea and I’d had plenty of interest from readers in seeing those stories.
After talking it over with Renee, we decided to take the little novella that could, and turn it into the first book in the series. Only there were a couple of problems: (1) I don’t write Daddy Doms (for the most part) and (2) We wanted to call the series Best Seller Paranormal Mystery series, which meant the original novel’s name had to change. So I went into the novel and stripped out all of the Daddy Dom references and changed it to a straight up D/S and added another three thousand words!
Once I started self-publishing, I had more control over titles and covers. Renee and I decided that we would “brand” series with titles and covers that related to one another. For example, there is a very similar look and feel to the Tangled Vines covers and the names are all things associated with wine: Harvest, Corked, Uncorked, Decanted, Breathe, Full-Bodied, Late Harvest and the upcoming Mulled Wine.
So, one sunny Saturday, I spent three hours on the phone with Renee going over mid-year goals and setting the publication schedule, which would include the Best Seller Paranormal Mystery series. First up? What do we title them? As with the Tangled Vines series we wanted the titles to all relate to the subject. In this case, publishing. The result was ADVANCE (www.books2read.com/advance), NEGOTIATON, coming October 28, 2021 (www.books2read.com/negotiate), SUBMISSION, coming December 2, 2021 (https://books2read.com/submission1), CONTRACT, coming January 6, 2022 (https://books2read.com/contract1) and BOUND, coming February 10, 2022 (https://books2read.com/bound3). I am extremely excited about this series and am enjoying the hell out of writing these books.
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