Category: paranormal romance

Writing Style – Tortoise or the Hare?

June 3, 2019

Writing is an interesting job. It’s part part project management, part marketing, part story-telling. The list goes on. And because of this, it takes creativity as well as mental and emotional strength to create an engaging story.

And for me, sometimes writing can be compared to the tortoise and the hare. I am currently writing my second paranormal wedding planner book this year. FOR BETTER OF FOR WOLF, book 4 of the series, is an eighty-one thousand word book that I wrote in two months. I wrote the last twenty thousand words in about ten days! Definitely reminiscent of the rabbit, or hare, right?

FOR WITCH OR FOR POORER, book 5 of the series, is chugging along at a ridiculously slow pace. The book is going to be a bit shorter, around fifty thousand words (or at least that’s the plan) and as much as I try, I can’t seem to up the pace. Tortoise vibe going on here.

Neither is necessarily a “bad” way to write, it’s just different. Sometimes it depends on where we (the writer) is in our lives. How much energy we have to expend at any given time when our real world (not our made up worlds) also need our attention as well.

So for now, I’ll move forward and finish this book. Whether I plod along of hop, the important thing is that I’m moving forward!

Spring has Sprung! Time for a Book Sale!

May 20, 2019

Spring is finally, FINALLY in the air where I live. And I want to celebrate. How does an author celebrate sunshine, green grass, and flowers?

With a book sale, of course!

And what better book to put on sale than FROM THIS FAE FORWARD. I mean, look at the cover below – it screams spring!

For the next week, you can get this book for 99 cents. If you haven’t spent any time in my paranormal wedding planner world, you’re in for a treat. Charlie, the hero of this book is a sexy, southern sea nymph who thinks he can sweet talk his way through anything and anybody. Until he meets woodland nymph, Sheila that is.

Sparks fly, sexy-banter ensues, and a mystery is solved along the way. Check it out!

 

Buy:   Amazon | iBooks  |  Kobo  | B&N  From Fae Final Ebook

What if Romeo and Juliet were paranormal…

Exiled from her woodland nymph clan, Sheila Hampton works as an exercise instructor for stressed-out paranormal brides—until her father tries to force her to marry as part of a political power play. Her unlikely hero/fake fiancé? A sexy-as-sin sea nymph from a rival clan. She should hate him, she really should…

Charlie Tucker has protected people in the past. It’s just a job—until it’s not. Not when it comes to a beautiful and headstrong woodland nymph. Now he’s posing as Sheila’s loving fiancé and planning the biggest fake nymph wedding of the century with her. He should hate her, he really should…

But when Sheila’s life is threatened, can this paranormal Romeo and Juliet find a way to change their tragic ending to a happy ever after?

A Writer’s Form of Exercise

May 13, 2019

Tonight I came home from work and worked out. The exercise DVD I used had me huffing and puffing and sweating, but when I was done it gave me a boost both psychologically and physically which I definitely need for my evenings.

For writers, we have to exercise our “writerly muscles” as well. Sometimes that means we brainstorm – like stretching our muscles so that we can get to the heavy lifting part of the exercise/writing.

Other times it means digging into the characters and plot – which is equivalent to the warm up part of the routine.

Then it’s all about writing those scenes. The crux of your workout, where you are chugging along and sometimes you’re flying high and other times you are wondering when the heck you’re going to be done.

Then there are the special scenes that just seem to “click” – that is the boosted part of the workout where you are really getting that heart rate up.

Finally you finish by jotting down some notes for tomorrow’s scenes. That’s your cool down period.

And so the cycle continues as I write my stories, stretching and conditioning my writerly muscles.

Writers Collaborating – AKA Escaping the Muck

April 22, 2019

I’ve told you before that even though writing can be solitary, often at its best, it is collaborative.

For me, I love it when my writer friends tell me about a concept they have been working on, or send me a couple pages of a new story and I dive into it and send back ideas for them to use (or not) in their story. And of course because it’s new and the beginnings of world-building, it’s full of excitement and energy.

But what is even more important sometimes is when a writer gets stuck in a story and can’t seem to pull their way out of the muck. At times like these, reaching out to a writer friend and telling them you need help is like a lifeline.

I am writing a new book and I got a few chapters in and it came to a screeching halt. And I pushed forward getting myself even more stuck than before. So I reached out to one of my critique partners and she literally was like, why don’t you do this? And it was so beautiful in its simplicity that I could have kicked myself for not thinking of it myself!

But that’s what collaboration is about. And then when another one of my writer friends read the first few chapters and I mentioned what writer friend A told me, she built on it even more for me, adding in some conflict for me.

Yahoo! And I am now moving forward with the story thanks to collaboration. So don’t believe it when you hear that writing has to be solitary.

So. Not. True.

WHERE is the journey taking us?

April 15, 2019

I hope you’ve been having a good time on this journey. We have been talking about re-covering my Mind Sweeper Series. We’ve touched on WHY, WHO, WHEN and WHAT. Today we’re going to talk about WHERE.

When you decide to change or re-brand your books, it isn’t just the print book cover that you need to worry about (if only it were that easy, my friends). No, re-branding touches ALL aspects of the book.

First, the retailers need to be updated. When you download the books from Amazon, or Barnes & Noble, or Kobo, or Apple you now see the amazing (if I say so myself) covers.

But that also means updating my website with new book covers as well as an social media that carries the AE Jones brand, like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

And let’s not forget my newsletters, and other areas where my covers appear. It can be a bit daunting to change all of this, but it’s worth it to give your covers a new look and feel. Because covers also convey emotion. Take the two covers of my series that deal with Jean Luc and Talia – I was looking for emotion and I got that and more in these two covers!

Now to the WHAT of our Journey…

April 8, 2019

And away we go again on this journey of new covers for my Mind Sweeper series. Over the past few weeks, we’ve talked about the WHY, WHO, and WHEN of recovering my series. Today I’m going to talk about the WHAT.

Sweeper Ebook Final (1)What is it that I am trying to say with my covers? With the new covers, I wanted to convey more of the Urban Fantasy vibe. To give readers a hint of the paranormal or other that my Mind Sweeper world lives in.

And this is when the fun and creativity comes into play.

My cover artist conveyed the sense of other with color. The purples, blues, pinks and turquoise takes us down a path of being a bit different, yet the colors all tie together overall, making the books compliment each other.

Then there’s the smoke or glow around the characters on the covers that give you that paranormal sense.Shifter Final Ebook (1)

Backgrounds also help convey a message. Since this series is Urban Fantasy, the urban (or in this case grunge) backdrop is important. Believe it or not, each background plays a part in that particular book’s story. For example, part of Shifter Wars takes place in a body shop, so it seemed appropriate to showcase Kyle standing in one.

And one of the coolest parts of the Shifter Wars cover is the cat sitting on the car. He plays an important part in the story as well!

Mind Sweeper has several pivotal scenes that take place in empty warehouses which lends itself to that urban feel.

Sentinel Lost’s background of the hallway on one side, and the stairs on the other represents choices. In that book, Kyle has to make a number of choices when it comes to love, her family, her own safety, and finally her life.

Sentinel Ebook Final (1)Even the font type conveys a “feeling” of other for the stories.

And we can’t forget about the pics on the t-shirts. For Mind Sweeper, the little girl with the magic wand is a perfect example of Kyle. Trying to find her way in the world when she doesn’t exactly “fit in” with everyone else.

The wolf on her Shifter Wars t shirt is pretty self-explanatory, (I hope) and finally the key on her t shirt on Sentinel Lost is the crux behind Kyle’s entire story arc.

Am I making your head hurt yet? Needless to say, my cover artist rocked these covers! And I wanted to share with you the WHAT behind the covers to give you an idea of what they represent for the series. And also to let you know about the thought behind them.

Let me know what you think…

 

 

Series Cover Reveal

April 1, 2019

Hello! If you’ve been following along with my blogs over the past few weeks, I’ve been talking about the new covers for my Mind Sweeper Series. We’ve talked about the WHY and the WHO on this re-cover journey. This week’s cover journey is all about the WHEN. When are you going to see the new versions of my covers for my series?

Answer: Today!

I spent last week (with the help of my wonderful book formatter) uploading all the new covers to the retailers so that these beauties are now available and also are on my website as well! Check them out and tell me what you think…

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I think my cover artist Melissa from The Illustrated Author is AMAZINGLY TALENTED. And yes, I am plugging her name and company to you before you ask me who I worked with (because you were going to ask me who I worked with…)

Plus,in celebration of the new covers, I’ve bundled the three Flashback (prequel) Stories for my Mind Sweeper Series, so if you don’t already own them, you can get them in this amazingly beautiful box set.

Order: Amazon   B&N   Apple    Kobo

3d Boxset

So there you have it! Next week, we’ll spend some time talking about the actual process of creating a cover – dig a little deeper, into the creativity of it 🙂

The Journey Continues with Who…

March 25, 2019

Thanks for joining me on this journey of redesigning my covers for my Mind Sweeper Series. Last week we talking about WHY and this week we’re going to talk about WHO. Who is an important question on several levels.

First – who do I want to partner with to create the covers. I have learned in this business to play to your strengths and while I think I have a good visual eye, that doesn’t mean I can actually create the cover myself. For that I need an expert. I turned to my cover artist that created my cartoon (or vector) covers for my Wedding Planner Series. She was more than happy to help me come up with a new vision for my Mind Sweeper Series as well.

And so I filled out a questionnaire for her about the first book. The questionnaire asked about the important characters in the book, as well as the setting and the plot summary. She asked about important symbols or emotions to convey on the cover. And a host of other questions, and then the process began. It was time to pick out the second WHO – the characters on the covers.

As you can see, my cover artist hit it out of the ballpark on the first swing when it came to Kyle, my heroine of the Mind Sweeper series. This is a hint at cover number one. Hopefully all of the covers will be available on the retailer sites by next week at the latest, but I couldn’t wait anymore to share one of the covers with you.

So what do you think?

 

The Journey Starts with Why…

March 18, 2019

Last week I talked about spending some time on my blog over the next few weeks talking about the journey of recovering books that are already out in the world. And it is indeed a journey.

And at the beginning of this (and any) journey is the question WHY. Why do I (or you Jane Doe Author) want to recover our books?

There are a number of answers to that question. It could be that you don’t feel that the cover truly reflects the book and/or brand. It could be that the covers were from a previous publisher and you have retained the rights back to the books and want to publish them. It could be that even though you feel the books are good, they aren’t selling. It could be that the covers worked for you for the first book(s), but as you write more books in the series, they don’t seem to work anymore. It could be that the genre isn’t evident in the covers. Heck, I am just brushing the surface on this. The bottom line is that you need to sit down and ask yourself WHY.

Because your answer will tell you if you should move forward or not AND it will also help you work with your cover artist to come up with a new design that does fit your vision for your series.

When I sat down and looked at my Mind Sweeper covers, I still like them. They were after all the first books I published and have a special place in my heart for them. However, if I look at the covers objectively, I think that they look more like suspense books and less like urban fantasy. So I chose to re-brand them with the hopes of appealing more to my audience and ultimately increase sales.

And so we begin the journey…

 

Cover This

March 11, 2019

This spring I will be releasing new covers for my Mind Sweeper Series. Why, you ask? As much as I love the original covers, it’s time for a face lift – taking the brand and dialing it up a notch.

Covers are a vital part of a writer’s book (and brand) – it entices readers to click on your cover, read the blurb, AND hopefully buy your book.

For many authors, changing covers has become a part of their normal marketing process. And yes, authors are also marketers as well. We have to be. In 2017, over 1 million books were self-published and that doesn’t count the books traditionally published. I’m sure that number increased for 2018.

So authors have to find ways to get noticed in the ginormous crowd. Covers, blurbs and other marketing techniques to find readers are something we have to take seriously as part of our writing business.

Over the next couple weeks, I’ll share my new cover journey with you and some of the thought behind where I started and where my cover artist and I ended up.

Come along for the ride – it should be interesting!