Beads of Blood

I’ve been a bad girl, haven’t I? With how long it took me to post again I should be strung up, but you know how life goes. I’m one chapter away from being done the third book in the DOW series. It does indeed look like the end, even though there’s always room for more. A kind of tragic, yet happy ending. Not everyone can get their fairytale, I suppose.

It turned out way way longer than I had imagined. I still have editing to do, a lot of cutting, a lot of grammar work, but I’m looking forward to it.

I finally lowered the price of my first book now that the third book in the series is well on its way to coming out. I have a few people who said they were looking forward to it, and I’m happy to deliver it, finally. I’ve also been anticipating working on another series. Never would I dream about working on two simultaneously. There was that long one month break I took from the DOW series to write Witherheart, and even though it only took me a month, now I’m looking back on it as being sort of irresponsible.
But I like Witherheart.

I do have a title for my third book. Beads of Blood. I’ve yet to work on the cover page, but I’m trying to get that out as soon as possible so that the public has an image to associate with the book. Plus, I just love doing cover art. I would have just been a freelance cover artist if I didn’t enjoy writing so much.

The third book should be out around Christmas, hopefully. I’ve been working very hard for that goal, but time is just flying by so quickly. But trust me, if this wasn’t something I enjoyed with all my heart, I wouldn’t be doing it.

My Inspiration, Witherheart, and the Third Book

I just did a four day free promo out of the flipping blue. That's because I had been waiting for two or three months to put Witherheart out and set up an email signup on my blog. It was so funny, because I never checked how many days I had left in the KDP Select. It turns out, I ONLY had four days left, and exactly FOUR days of free promo available. I did what I had to do.

I got over a thousand downloads for those four days, so I'm not complaining, but I simply wish it was more. I'm so very happy to finally have Witherheart out, by the way. I reread the whole thing two days ago and fixed a number of mistakes, and then re-uploaded it to Amazon, Smashwords, and Createspace. I was reading Dracula last night and got so inspired! I love that book. Beautifully written, intelligent, and engrossing. But I get lost sometimes reading it. That's why I like simple books. What I care most is that my writing is not pretty, but super easy to understand. So much, in fact, that the reader forgets they are reading words. That should ultimately be the goal of any writer, I believe.

In Witherheart, one vampire dominates the entire book. His name is Cane. Well, I wouldn't say he dominates the book in screen time. What I mean is that he's the main villain. He was inspired somewhat by Dracula and another character called Nicholas in Anya Seton's Dragonwyck. Now don't get me wrong. Cane comes close to neither character in terms of development or intelligence. I'm not good enough a writer to capture the feeling of those characters, however I do like Cane. I like him a lot. There's so much back story in Witherheart I didn't get to put in the book, not to cheat the reader out of background, but because I just didn't see a place for it without having to force it in there. I'm loosely thinking about making a second book, but right now the main thing I care about is Dragons of Witchcraft.

The third book is long overdue, and for the first time in months I find myself getting super excited about the outcome of the story. I'm compelled by my characters again. So many seeds were planted in the first and second book, hints of things that were given no explanation. All those things come to fruition in the third book, including bits of things that appeared in the first book that the reader probably thought had no meaning at all.

Witherheart--DONE

64000 words and Witherheart is done. It took me a month. I will give myself a week to edit it, and then I'll fuse it into my Aweber confirmation page. I'm so happy. Nonstop writing everyday for a month. It was pretty fun and I'm happy with the way it turned out. I do wish I could sell it, but I already promised that I would put it our free, and I will. I would love to have an e-list--definitely. After I'm satisfied that Witherheart can no longer be improved, I'll get off my ass and finish the third book in the Dragons of Witchcraft series. Perhaps I'll make the cover beforehand. Seeing the cover of a book always gives me motivation to finish it. The plot turned out quite different than I expected, but that's okay. Witherheart is a strange name for a boarding house, isn't it? Anjette (main character) thinks so too, as she describes sarcastically "as it had been so poetically dubbed." Lol. Making fun of myself there. I had the image of a gothic tower when I named it, not that there was ever a gothic tower with that name. But if there was, I wouldn't mind living in it.

I read a lot of romantic fiction. Adult romantic fiction. But it feels like I've practically just graduated high school and should be reading something more juvenile. Now I do appreciate juvenile fiction. How can I not when I write about it? I grew up on young adult romantic thriller fiction and fell in love with books like Hunger Games, City of Bones, and the Darkest Powers series. At one point, and I'm not ashamed to admit it, I was a part of the Twilight craze until my senior year.

My favorite book from the adult world so far has been Secret Fire by Johanna Lindsey. She's amazing. Some of her books I hate, but a lot of her books I love too. I've read other harlequin authors as well and I have to say that there's a reason these books are generalized and scorned by male readers. They all have a LOT of similarities.

But hell, the similarities work. They got my attention and had me chomping through Lindsey's entire conquest. Readers will buy books from authors they like. It's that simple. That's why I ache to have more books out. I have two in the process and one already completed, yet not all the way edited. If I play my cards right I hope to have Witherheart out within the next 2 months, the third book in the Dragons of Witchcraft series sometime within the next 3-4 months, and Girl in the globe out sometime after that, even though it's the only one out of the three that actually has a completed rough draft.

I've been watching and rewatching Social Network and Dark Knight lately. They're amazing movies and I love them so much. Dark Knight because, you know, Christopher Nolan is God, and because Social Network I just love. Mark Zuckerberg really did put in an extraordinary amount of work to get facebook going, and that if nothing else is something to be admired. I just love it when people put their hearts into projects that they really believe in.

I myself wish I could work harder. I think I'm stupid for putting so many projects on my list at once, but I have a goal I'm trying to achieve. I'll get there one day!

Witherheart

I'm currently in the process of setting up an e-list. I would like readers to be able to subscribe to a newsletter for information on future books, release dates, and so forth. This is the cover for a new book I'm writing that will soon be offered for free for those who sign up for the newsletter. That vampire novel I mention before? This is the one. It's called Witherheart. It won't be as long as my other books, I'm hoping, nor do I know yet whether the end will leave room for sequels, but I'm anxious to find out. Here is a brief summary of the book for those of you that are interested.

Anjette is the only one who believes her mother has died by the hands of a vampire, one who was also her lover. When three years pass and she is sent to live at boarding house by an aunt who claims she can no longer support four children, things start to happen which lead her to believe that the vampire has not only come back, but he's not done. Witherheart, deemed a retreat for troubled teens, shelters a variety of people who all either seem afraid of her or defer to her, one being a boy named Kegan who she believes will keep her from knowing the truth. Unless she can get around him.

The story is set in Chicago near Lincoln Park during the fall. Anjette will be different from Paige in that she is more reserved and more tactical. Paige I've come to like, so it'll be interesting to see how this new character deals with a chain of events just as mysterious and threatening. Also, it will be from third person perspective.

Now Uploading

I've worked harder on this book than I ever have on anything in my entire life. For the past week all I've done is read, write, and edit. I only ate once a day, hardly went to the bathroom, never went outside, didn't exercise, didn't play games, didn't talk to ANYONE, and my sleeping schedule's an absolute train-wreck. Now don't take these as complaints, because they're not. Despite the craziness, I actually enjoyed doing it.

I went to createspace.com, ordered a proofing copy, sat for two days reading the whole thing and marking the pages with red ink, fixed my word doc., re-formatted for kindle, and then uploaded it. This is ALL after changing the entire POV of my book.

Paige was entirely too uptight and mature, and I struggled in making her sound more her age. She's sarcastic, independent, and cares for her family and friends a great deal. This is the personality I hoped to get across with my writing, and only time will tell if I succeeded.

I just uploaded my new cover:

Background provided by awesome Brenda Starr on http://www.flickr.com/photos/brenda-starr/

and the edited document, and am currently waiting for publication. I changed the price to $2.99 to see how it goes, at least until the second book, Cinder Halo, has been edited and released too. I already made the new cover for that one:

 

and hope to get this thing done anywhere between this week and next week. I don't know when I'll enroll in KDP Select. I was hoping to get the second book out when I did that, but who knows, that could change in the next few days, depending on how frustrated I get by lack of sales.

Unpublished

I unpublished both my books from the Amazon Kindle market two days ago. This is because I'm editing. I know it's unnecessary to take the books down while I do this, but I just didn't feel right leaving them up. With every mistake I found I would think "Oh lord, and it's up there right now, live. People are actually seeing this . . ."

I'm having several people look at my work now, and I don't know when I'll be back up. I'm also looking for a new cover artist. Proud as I may have been for the measly one I created, I'm sensible enough to know that it's just not good enough. It's not the kind of cover that draws in readers. Pretty? I guess, but also a little . . . cheap?

Once everything is taken care of, I plan to enroll in the KDP Select. Now there has been a lot of religious talk going around about the KDP Select, but with a little research I found that enrolling would be best for me personally. That’s because KDP Select offers an exponential amount of exposure that is crucial for a nobody like me. Having my book up there for 90 days is no big deal, especially when I can choose any days out of those 90 to promote my book free. That’s really something, and authors have seen a lot of success with that.

Before that happens, I have to make sure that my books are as clean and perfect as I can make them. When people actually read the content, I want them to think that my books are more than just pretty covers.