Wednesday 17 September 2014

New Release - An Heiress in Venice! (At a special release price)



And An Heiress in Venice is out! Finally! Until Saturday Sept 20, available at the special new release price of $0.99 (will revert to its regular price of $2.99 early Sunday morning.)

Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon DE

The Blurb: 

Note: An Heiress in Venice is a stand-alone story, but part of the Nights in Venice series. Other stories in this series are of different couples. This story includes spankings, domination, graphic sexual scenes, and more.

He is Enzo Peron. By day, he is a Chief Inspector of Police in Venice. By night, a Dominant at Casanova, Venice’s most exclusive BDSM club.

She is Alice Blackwell, an American heiress who has fled to Venice. She comes to Club Casanova, hoping to explore the submissive desires she has held in check for many years.

He dominates her. She submits to him.

But Alice has a past, and it is determined to reclaim her. 


Buy Links: 

Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon DE

Prologue:

Alice:

It was three years after Ian’s death before I even thought about another man.
I’d been at some kind of fancy art gallery opening, the kind where they fed you cheese and wine and tried to get you to buy art when you were slightly tipsy. A guy had come up to me, we chatted about the meaning of life, and at the end of the evening, he asked me out to dinner.

Craig Dearborn had been handsome, kind and funny, and I’d had a much better time than I had expected. But, two days later, I’d received another letter in the mail, this one containing a photo of Craig and me from our dinner. I’d been laughing at something he’d said. I had looked happy.

My mysterious letter-writer had only written one sentence, but it was effective enough.
‘End this, or I’ll end him.’

I had ended things with Craig, declining to offer an explanation. But that had been the last straw. I’d lived in the shadow of the letters for the last three years, my emotions oscillating between angry recklessness and hopeless terror. But I’d be damned if I was dragging another person into the shit-show that was my life.

Many, many years ago, when I was a child, and my parents were still talking to me, they’d told me about the city they had honeymooned in. Venice. They had made it sound so magical. My mother’s eyes had been soft as she remembered how she fed the pigeons at the Piazza San Marco and how my parents had sat on the cobblestones and had eaten bread and cheese and fruit, and found themselves perfectly content with life.

Once upon a time, my life too had been magical, but those days were past. Yet, I still ran away to Venice.

***

It had been a week since my arrival in Venice, and on cue, a letter was slipped under the door of my hotel room. This time, there was no picture.

‘How far do you think you can run, Alice?’


And though I’d moved halfway across the world, hoping to be left alone, I’d been wrong. Whoever this person was who wanted me dead, I couldn’t outrun him or her. I couldn’t hide. All I could do was wait.

Click to keep reading - only 0.99 until Sept 21! Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon DE

Monday 15 September 2014

A Year in Review Part 1

Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be recapping the first year of my self-publishing adventure.

Today, a graph, showing book releases by month. This is the result of writing nearly 2000 words a day, every single day, for the last year.


In case you are wondering, I can't write four books a month. Both Feb and July, I took advantage of earlier written words. Magic Everywhere, Leila's Training and Raina's Wedding are the three stories in Chronicles of Raan (which actually makes Feb a very unproductive writing month) and the same with July, where I bundled all the Alien stories together.

Still. This is Russell Blake's formula applied. Write lots of books, release often, don't expect anyone of them to be a breakaway hit. It needs said - I like every book that I write. If I'm not happy, it doesn't get released until I am. (Cough cough Heiress.) But this is also a numbers game, and you will kill yourself if you spend a lot of time wondering why your book isn't selling. Write the next one - try again.

I'm not making huge sums of money or anything, but I'm doing much better than I expected, one year in.

Saturday 6 September 2014

Cover Reveal and a Giveaway!


Yes! At long last, An Heiress In Venice is starting to look very, very real. Here is a cover!

Also - would you like to win a copy of A Thief in Venice? I have a giveaway going on right now. Click on over!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thursday 4 September 2014

The tyranny of word count...

When I buy books on Amazon, one of the first things I look at, apart from the blurb and the reviews is the page count. I've come to the (not entirely correct) conclusion that a longer book takes more time to develop its characters and isn't a stroke piece.

Like most things in life, this isn't exactly true. I recently read Ella James' Red and Wolfe series, and the first book totally drew me in, even though it was only 52 pages long.

But as a writer, somewhere, along the way, I've started judging myself for not being able to authentically go over 40,000 words. Mostly, in my case, it's description that doesn't get written. You'll rarely read about what the girl or the guy wore in my books. You won't find out whether the kitchen had granite or marble countertops, you won't know what colour the drapes were (or even if there were drapes.)

What you will find is two stories - hers and his - and how they intertwine. 

Incidentally, I don't write about description because, as a reader, I don't read it. My eyes glaze past detail to hone in on dialog. I write the way I read.  

******************************************

It's no secret that I've been having problems with Heiress. When I sent my first version over to my editor, he was less than enthused.

"It's a nice rom-com," he said dubiously. "It'll sell." 

"Is it good?" I asked him

And there was silence. 

******************************************

"It'll sell" is not what I'm going for. I want fun. I want spark. I want memorable, and I want to fall in love with my characters.

That version clocked in at 40,000 words. I was trying to make it longer; I didn't add in description, because I just can't, but I did add in extra scenes - scenes that took away from the crispness of the story.

Suddenly, Heiress had become like a soggy dill pickle. Still good, but crisp is so much better.

We made a decision that I needed to hold off and fix it. And so, I went back to the drawing board. Again and again. And again. On the 2nd, I sent him another version. This version had a good 10,000 words stripped out. The story is tighter. It moves faster. Sure, it's shorter. But it's absolutely better.

What I learned? It's not always about word count. In fact, it probably is never about word count.

In the end, it's just about two stories - his and hers - and how they intertwine. Anything else doesn't belong. 

How's Heiress going, you ask? I'll find out by the weekend.  So far, I'm cautiously optimistic.