I finished my WIP, VioleNt!! I’m so excited to be done, I’ve been working on it for a long time, and I was disrupted by the illness I had in March and April. It’s been a labor of love for me, and it has evolved into something completely different than where it started.
Originally, I thought it might be a short story. The FMC quickly quashed that idea when she had so much more to share. Next it grew into a two-part horror novel, and I thought it would be an interesting idea to let readers decide if they would read her earlier life story or skip I the early years. Again, she decided I wasn’t doing what she wanted.
When she met a couple of hot guys and wanted them to be more involved in her story, she turned it into a duet. When the first part of the duet stretched on and on, I had to cut the part one/prequel and make it a separate entity. Having just learned about “reader magnets” I had a brilliant idea to make the prequel into a reader magnet or RM. I'll explain more in a minute.
My duet horror story is now a duet and a half, with a spicy RH romance twist. Sounds like a Starbucks order, right? Here’s how it’s standing right now:
Violet’s Tales-RH Horror Romance-
Origin of Violet, Book .5 (RM) planned release October 2024
VioleNt, Book 1 planned release October 2024
Vile, Book 2 planned release 2025
RMs are something you offer to readers for free to entice them to try out your books. In other words, it’s a free sample of your books. If you do it right, it’s a sample that has the same characters and plot line of the books you want them to get excited about. You can write a stand-alone piece that doesn’t connect to any of your books to showcase your writing style, but it tends to work better if they get excited about some characters and want to read more about them by purchasing your books.
In the case of Violet’s Tales, I sort of fell ass backwards into a readymade RM. It tells the story of how Violet becomes the person she is, covering her childhood traumas and her teen years of growth. Book one begins the real story of her life now, she meets her love interest, and grows and develops her life skills. I’ve been enjoying her story so much and I can’t wait to release it, with hopes others will enjoy it as well. I'll let you know how it all plays out in a future blog.
In more exciting news, for me, my editor finished a read through of Force Majeure. She has given me notes for ways to shave a little of it off and how to correct a few minor story issues. Her main comments were: There’s really only minor grammar and punctuation things to fix, a very few story plot holes that need very little fixing, and overall, she LOVED it! She ended up staying up all night to read from chapter twenty-eight to the end in chapter forty-six because she couldn’t put it down. What a huge compliment, I’m so flattered and it reinforces my little confidence in my writing. Imposter syndrome is real!
Now, my edits of Force Majeure begin while I let Violet rest a bit. I’m hoping to get FM released by the end of August. I need to make at least two passes for edits, hire a proofreader to make a pass, and then make another pass myself. If all is well at that point, I’ll hire a formatting person, which may be my proofreader, and hopefully get it uploaded and ready for a late August or early September release.
I’m planning for an ARC campaign, but I have some different ideas this time. I'll let you know more about it when it’s closer. I’ve been reading everything I can from successful authors about how they handle ARCs. You’ll be the first to know if I have any success with new ideas.
Somehow between all of the FM editing and release, I'll need to get VioleNt edited, the release is planned for Violet’s birthday, October 13th. I have a basic outline planned for book three in the Forces of Nature Series, and of course book two in Violet’s Tales. I have the whole plot mostly planned for Vile. Force of Addiction, Book Three, in the Forces of Nature Series is planned as far as who’s in it and a bare minimum of the plot. I also want to work on a spin off MC series from FM characters.
I’ve hit you with a few acronyms, how are you doing with those? Do you remember my previous blogs where I covered them? I saw one today I don’t know, and I need to Google until I figure it out. Does anyone know what NL means? It was in regard to book sales, I think. It didn’t really make sense to me at all. Often, I can infer from the sentence, but not with this one. If I figure it out, I’ll let you know in a future blog.
Before I go to bed, I wanted to give you an update on some upcoming events. I’m part of a virtual live author event on June 22nd. It’s FREE to attend, or you can purchase an upgrade to a higher tier and get swag, Eswag, and be entered into a raffle for some lovely items from the attending authors. I'll include the registration link at the end of the blog. I’m also going to be interviewed for a podcast on June 5th. I'll post a link when I have it, I’m a little nervous, I hate my voice. Hopefully it won’t be too bad.
Speaking of voices, the wonderful voice artist I’m collaborating with is going to record some excerpts of FOC for me to use at the live author event. I’m excited to hear how they turn out. His voice is so smooth and deep, it’s going to sound so professional. He’s going to be recording my short stories and eventually even Violet’s Tales. It will be an interesting experiment. He’s a newbie and I’m a newbie we’re hoping to help each other have some experience and with any luck, success.
My attorney helped me write up a copyright lease agreement so the voice artist can record and post my books on his socials. I'll be able to post them on mine as well. As always, I’ll let you know how it goes. If I can avoid the hospital, I might accomplish some cool stuff over the rest of this year. I do have some tests coming up and I need three hand surgeries, I might just become an expert user of talk to text!
All right, I’m getting sleepy. I hope you have an incredible weekend and thank you so much for reading!
Readers Break the Internet live author book signing event registration link:
https://facebook.com/events/s/readers-break-the-internet-onl/797504215772748/