As I’m quietly and steadily working my way through Blood Stone, and the weekend started out with an empty email in-tray, and nothing moving on Facebook or anywhere else, I thought this was going to be one of those bulletins where I would have nothing to report, except for progress.
But Sunday, which is usually the day when everything on the Internet falls quieter than the grave, suddenly got busy.
And, I’ve had a small flurry of reader emails with questions about future books that I thought I would answer here, as well as the private answers I gave, in case others were wondering the same thing.
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Bannockburn Binding was nominated for Book Of The Year 2011 by The Romance Reader. It just manages to scrape in for this honour because it was released on December 13 last year, so it was a great surprise — especially as the book is indie-published. A nice hats-off.
Now, though, the winner is selected by reader votes. I’m always reluctant to trawl for reader votes. There’s so many polls and reader-vote elections out there, and in my category alone there are about twenty books, each with their individual author possibly hounding readers for votes! So…I’m not begging you to vote. However, if you have read Bannockburn Binding and really feel you would like to vote for it, you can click here, then scroll down to the erotic paranormal category (about half-way down the page). Bannockburn Binding is the second book is the category.
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The Royal Talisman received a very nice 4 Star review from Love Romance Passion.
The review itself was short on detail about why the reviewer liked the book so much, but she did like the special features a lot, which was nice. She also gave Dar Albert, the cover artist, a lovely thumbs up, too.
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From the mailbox:
A reader was anxiously asking if there will be any more books after Byzantine Heartbreak, and another reader/reviewer wants to see Brenden’s story…and what are the release dates.
Yes, there will most definitely be more books in the series. At this point in time I can’t say how many more, but this is not a simple trilogy, by any means. I consider the series to be open-ended with ambitious, complex story-lines and character arcs.
Look at the cover montage for the series. There’s two way to do that: Place each book cover for the series side by side to build up the montage that way. Or “cheat” and jump to the series information page to see the full montage spread in one view. Apart from being awed by Dar Albert’s artistic talents, you’ll also notice there’s a lot of room for a lot more covers on that montage. I planned it that way. 🙂
Release Dates
As for release dates…well, that’s one of the joys — and pitfalls — of indie publishing. The advantages, especially to you the reader, is that I can release these books as fast as I can write and edit them, plus or minus a week or two for formatting and for Dar Albert to build covers (and she’s very fast). The down side is that it does take time to edit, format and upload to all the various retail sites, and those sites won’t hold or delay a release, nor will they guarantee exactly how long it takes to build a sales page for a book. So there is no way to predict, for example, the exact date and time a book will appear on the Amazon site, even though I know exactly when I upload it to Amazon. That part of it is out of my control. The same applies for all the retail sites — Barnes & Noble, etc.
Therefore, all I can say in regard to a release date for future books in the series is that they will be as soon as I’ve written the books — and I’m a pretty fast writer — and that your best best is to either sign up for my newsletter or sign up for the email version of my RSS feed, so it is delivered to your email in-box. That way, you’ll get an alert about the release of any books, and won’t miss out.
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I’ve updated the Recommended MMF Romances list.
I’ve added some more titles, and I rearranged the list into sub-genre groups.
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A reader asked what happened to the Kiss Across Time series, and Kiss Across Chains, the third book in that series, which up and disappeared.
The Time-Crossed Love series was first released under the Teal Ceagh pen name with Ellora’s Cave. It’s one of my favourite series of all time, and I love and adore Brody and Veris and their extreme alpha-male outlook on life and time. I was never so happy as I was when I was prompted into writing Kiss Across Swords by readers and reviewers who belly-ached politely asked for more about their histories and…well, just more of them.
I have the third book of the series, Kiss Across Chains, half-written, and ideas for six more in the series. Like Beloved Bloody Time, this is not going to be a simple trilogy.
But, the first two books of the series remain with Ellora’s Cave for now. I am working to have the rights returned to me, but until I do, I won’t release the third book in the series. To do so would only further cement the first two books where they currently sit, and there are things I want to do with the first two books before I release the third (including issue them with uniform covers, expand the first book to make it a longer book, and more.)
So for now, this series must wait in the wings.
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“I wish I could join a board or something and review your books, they are that great.”
There’s two parts to this: Reviews and discussion boards.
Reviews.
There are any number of places you can leave a reader review about my books, if you feel moved to do so. I encourage you like crazy to do this.
As more and more indie authors start publishing more and more books, one of the few ways readers will be able to figure out which are the good books and which are the duds are through other readers’ reviews — and there will be more and more duds: It’s part of the price we pay for the flood of cheap, great and really interesting reads on the market.
Your review doesn’t have to be perfect prose. Just a paragraph or two of simple, clear English saying what you thought about the book, and why you did (or didn’t) enjoy it — what made it work for you? Keep it impersonal (no attacks on the author themselves), and rate the book, and you’re done.
The absolute best place to leave your review is Amazon. Even if you didn’t buy your book there. That’s because huge numbers of people research about what book they want to buy next on Amazon, and then they sometimes buy the book elsewhere because they want a different format, or can buy it cheaper elsewhere, or for other reasons. But they’ll research on Amazon first, because the information about individual books is so thorough and complete.
So you’ll be doing me all sorts of favours by leaving your review about my book on Amazon.
Discussion Boards
Amazon to the rescue again. Did you know that every single book on Amazon has its own unique discussion board?
If you scroll down to where the general discussion boards start, way down the bottom of the book’s page, just above those board subject lines, there is a live link to the book’s discussion page. Most of the time (well, all of the time, for my books! LOL!) the discussion is empty. But if you want to start a discussion group for a book (anyone’s book), or join it, you’ll find the link to the book’s discussion group right there. Click on it, and dive in.
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The biggest news of the weekend, and the last to arrive in my in-box, was the brand new cover for Delly’s Last Night. The cover, another Dar Albert spectacular, is mind-blowing. I don’t know if you’ve ever taken the time to double-click on the covers here on the site, and look at them when they’re at full size or better. It’s worth it. Then you really get to appreciate the full stunning detail. They’re mind-bogglingly beautiful. And the amazing thing is, Dar builds these covers from scratch. She creates them out of nothing. She doesn’t use stock photos except in the background sometimes, when I insist on historical accuracy, or well-known buildings.
Check out the cover for Delly’s Last Night, and click on it to see it at full size.
I stayed up late on Sunday night and formatted the book for release, so now you can buy it, too. 🙂
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