Happy Saturday!
Guys, I love sending you this weekly email. It’s great finding wonderful promotions to take part in and send for you to check out. Your responses are always so lovely, so thank you for being awesome and reading what I email you. 💖
This week, I’ve got two BookFunnel Promotions, a StoryOrigin promotion and three books for you to check out.
I also published the rewrite of The Album yesterday, so if you already bought a copy of the original, congratulations on being in possession of a first edition! It’s funny, I’ve always heard of the rarity of first editions and how they’re so valuable. Now, I know the truth. Valuable, they may be, but they are not the best version of the story being told.
I’ll tell you more about what’s happening at the end with the Cruise Control update, anyway. So, let’s get into it!
Time to look at books!
Okay, this is the one I’m most excited about! This has, no joke, 238 books that are all on sale right now! As part of this and the release of the Second Edition of The Album, I’ve put it on sale for $0.99 until May 2nd, so get it while it’s hot!
If you want to check out these ridiculously awesome deals, click here.
Okay, next up we’ve got The Heart of Romance promotion, another BookFunnel one. You’ll never guess what this is filled with…crime novels, of course. No, wait, I read that wrong. It’s romance novels! 😝
89 of them, to be precise. I don’t think I’ve mentioned, but of course the free sample of The Album that I submit to these promotions has been updated to the new version. So if you haven’t checked it out yet, you can do it by going to any one of these promotions (except the sale one above, which will take you to Amazon to buy it!).
The sample is the first two chapters of the book, so you can read it and compare to the old version if you’re so inclined. Or…just read the new one and enjoy that!
Anyway, you can check that promotion out here.
This is the last group promotion for this week. It’s a StoryOrigin promo with 43 romance novels to check out.
You can take a look at them by clicking this link.
The abs are hard. The kisses are countless. And the happily ever afters will leave you breathless…but no one said getting there would be easy.
With billionaire bad boys, second chance lovers, sexy royals, delicious daddies, secret babies, and more of your favorite contemporary romance tropes, there’s something for everyone in this collection of 24 contemporary romance novels from today’s USA Today bestselling, award-winning, and rising star authors.
Twenty-four chances to find Mr. Right. What could go wrong?
Eeeeek! If you like short stories that you can devour quickly, definitely give this collection a go. You can get Romantically Ever After here.
Overcoming the past is not easy, when the future seems just as scary…
Havana Heat is book one of the Romance Set in Paradise series of steamy, suspenseful, romantic stand-alone novella length stories, set in exotic locations around the world. Readers are transported to the paradise of Cuba’s capital Havana, following the romance and heat build between Spanish Detective Sebastian Garcia, and London born and bred wedding planner Melinda Jones.
Melinda’s path crosses with the handsome and charming Detective at Casa De Amour Hotel as a guest at her client’s exotic location wedding. Both characters are in search of a slice of paradise, away from their own troubled love life back home. Originally with different agendas, once their paths cross the romance and sizzle begins.
After all hell breaks out at Casa De Amour Hotel, conflict builds over Sebastian’s past, both characters are faced with a decision to take a risk and see out their romance, or walk away. Forever asking themselves what could have been with their chances of love.
Sebastian and Melinda both grow as individuals from their encounter in Havana, following a few bumps along the way they find the real meaning of love. Romance, thrills and excitement await in book one of this romance series set in paradise.
You can check out Havana Heat by clicking this link.
Emma writes romances that are in danger of bursting into flames from the heat. She’s obsessed. Devoting all her time to her steamy novels; while living through the wild sexy exploits of her characters to forget the heartbreaking torment from the past.
She’s forced away from her structured existence with the appearance of two men, one from her old life and the other from the present. They crash into her life dragging chaos to her door, battling for her heart and a place in her bed.
A choice between two men drives her old fears to the surface forcing her to confront desires that will break her world apart again. But is it worth it, to face your demons for a second chance at love?
This is a triangle romance and the first of a series. This book is a standalone. Contemporary steamy romance.
I can’t even lie, I love Pax’s books. I downloaded this one myself. You can get Someone Like You for free by clicking this link.
Okay, as I mentioned, the rewrite of The Album is now live and available here for $0.99 USD this week. It’s live at all the major retailers but that link will be updated when any new retailers add it to their stores.
So, I just checked and last week Lita and Sebastian’s book, The Baby, sat at 83,888 words. As of right now, it’s 90,863, so only 6,975 words added to it this week. Tomorrow will also be four weeks to the day since I started it.
Now, am I crazy for being sad that I likely won’t finish it in five weeks like I did with Heather and Sebastian’s book? Yes, of course, even I know that. I’m not sure why I’m so hard on myself, but hey, if you ever wanted to know where my characters get their issues from… *points to self*
So, what did I do this week? Well, I did actually add one and a bit chapters to The Baby, so that’s something but I found myself suffering from writer’s block…so I did the obvious thing, I procrastinated, of course! I re-wrote The Album and as I said, I’m so incredibly happy with it! All the people that have read the rewrite so far have loved it and preferred it to the original.
As we all know, my mum is my biggest fan, and The Album was her favourite book. She even told me “don’t touch perfection” (she’s pretty sweet to me!). Once she’d read the rewrite, though, she admitted that if she could only read one version for the rest of her life…it would be the new one!
Another person whose initial response was “no, don’t do that”, came back with “I completely loved it”, and even changed her review from four stars to five! Most importantly, I guess, is that I’m happy with it. I’m happy with how it fits in the series, now. Ariana has a much better and stronger portrayal, as well (I originally wrote “character” there, but she was always a strong character, just didn’t get viewed well).
What else did I do? I discovered writing in first-person POV. Now, I know that I write all of my blogs and newsletters in this narration style but that’s because it’s me writing about me. I also use Australian English, where my books are set in the US, so I use American English in those. My default narration for storytelling, however, is close, limited, third-person POV.
A writer friend is currently rewriting one of her books from third-person to first-person POV and we were discussing it, so I decided to give it a go…I’ll be darned if I didn’t love it! I wrote a paragraph, initially, then went on to write the entirety of the first chapter of The Baby from Sebastian’s first-person POV.
Obviously, if you’re getting this email, then you received Gabriel’s chapter from his perspective (which reminds me that I need to update it to match the rewrite, I’ll do that and include it in next week’s email for you guys). My plan was always to do a set of four companion hero books to match the heroine books once the original series was finished.
I’ve decided, now, that I’ll write those in first-person POV. I like that it’ll make them slightly different, again, to the original books rather than just being the same stories from the same narration style but a different POV.
Let me tell you, it’s absolutely glorious being in Sebastian Fox’s head. The same way that I know The Wedding will be my favourite of the four heroine books, I already know that Sebastian’s Baby will be my favourite of the four hero books.
I haven’t decided, yet, if I’ll rewrite the sample chapter that goes out when you sign up for my newsletter to be Gabriel’s first-person POV. If anyone out there feels particularly strongly about this, feel free to reply to this email and ask me to do it, because you could probably twist my arm fairly easily. 😉
I don’t know if I said this last week, but I’ve also been really struggling with The Baby. I think I wrote about it on my blog a couple of times (check it out here if you’re interested in more of my ramblings, I also added a work-in-progress counter yesterday, so you can see where my word count is currently at!). I haven’t had writer’s block like this before…maybe a tiny bit before, or during the early stages of, writing The Wedding.
Basically, the last two days I’ve done pretty much anything but continue writing the book. Here are my fears…I’m still 18 weeks into a 40-week pregnancy…at 90,000 words. The same way that I knew I had eight chapters left to write of The Wedding at this point, I feel like this thing is going to come in at about 150,000 words.
My other concern was that most of the major tension resolved much too early because I can’t control my damn characters. You’d think I could, but I can’t. I know exactly what needs to happen in the timeline I have left, but…does anybody want to read a book where it’s just happy people doing things in their everyday lives, even if they’re rock stars?
Maybe. But, probably not. I’m told that’s not good storytelling. So, I went to a friend with my problem and she gave me the solution. It was a solution that I had come up with, already, but she expanded on it and made it perfect. So, when November 17th comes and you’re reading The Baby, say a big thank you in your head to Ally. The book is going to be dedicated to her, as well, because Sebastian is her book boyfriend…he’s mine, too. I might have to fight her for him, or something!
Anyway, have a great rest of the weekend. Monday is a public holiday here in Western Australia and I’m on a 9-day fortnight at work because of The-Thing-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, so hopefully, by next Saturday, I’ll have added a huge chunk of words to The Baby. My secret goal is to hit 122,000 words by Sunday, which is the word count that The Wedding finished at, so I’ll know that I can write that much in a five-week period more than once.
Okay, this email is ridiculously long, I’m aware. If you’re reading this, woohoo, you’re awesome! You should know it! Whether you scrolled to the bottom without reading the rest of the email, or you read it all in one sitting, or you read it in several attempts (I’m subscribed to a few author newsletters, authors tend to write a lot, so I have to do that sometimes!), thank you for reading it at all.
You’re the best! 😘
