Tag Archives: impulse trilogy

Earth Day rebate on all my titles over at All Romance Ebooks @allromance #books

Today, All Romance eBooks is having an Earth Day special, offering a 50% rebate on most of their titles, including all of mine.

This means you can get Impulse: The Complete Trilogy for $4.00 after rebate. Same goes for The Professor’s Rule: The Complete Collection.

The Laird’s Forbidden Lover is less than $1.00.

Player vs. Player and Strain are $3.50 after rebate. And Saugatuck Summer is only $2.27

(again, these prices are after rebate, not upon checkout. You can turn around and use your ebook bucks to buy more books!)

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All my titles are eligible for a 50% rebate @AllRomance today! #mmromance

Today you can get a 50% rebate in store credit at All Romance ebooks on all my titles, along with most of the rest of their store! Great chance to get caught up on anything you’ve missed lately!

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50% rebate @AllRomance today only in honor of Earth Day!

Today, April 22, ARe is offering a 50% rebate on all eligible titles, which includes all of mine. After rebate, you can get:

The entire Impulse trilogy for $5.00
The entire The Professor’s Rule series for $6.00
Strain for $3.50
The Laird’s Forbidden Lover for $2.00

So by all means, check out my books at ARe and pick those up. Then use the resulting rebate to grab some other awesome ARe titles!

 

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The STRAIN blog tour drawing results

Congratulations to Trix, Valerie Davila, and Jen, whose names came up for the drawing of three copies of Impulse: The Complete Trilogy for commenting on the Strain blog tour. You should all have already received an email asking for your preferred format. If you haven’t received the email, check your spam folder, then contact me using the form on the “About” page here. Thank you so much for following the tour, and congratulations!

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The first week of #STRAIN: a recap #postapocalyptic #erotica #mmromance @RiptideBooks

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Friday wrapped up the Strain blog tour, but there is still time to comment and enter to win one of three copies of Impulse: The Complete Trilogy. Entries will remain open until February 28, with the drawing being held on March 1, so be sure to comment at each stop and leave contact information (you can leave a Twitter or Facebook ID if you don’t want to leave an email.)

I tried to structure this blog tour a little differently, making it like the extras on a DVD. Along the way, I shared not only a deleted scene and a sneak peek at Bane, the upcoming prequel to Strain, but also a lot of behind-the-scenes discussion of the world-building that went into Strain. Here’s a brief recap:

Part One: Project Juggernaut (The Jeep Diva)
Part Two: The Juggernaut Battalion (Pants-Off Reviews)
Part Three: Does a Sex Scene Have to be Sexy? (3 Chicks After Dark)
Part Four: The Women of Delta Company (Queer Town Abbey)
Part Five: Oh, But This Darling was Tough to Kill (a deleted BDSM sex scene at Sinfully Sexy Book Reviews)
Part Six: Fluid Exchange in Strain (The Book Nympho)
Part Seven: A Sneak Peek at Bane, the prequel to Strain (Book Reviews and More by Kathy)

There were also a number of stoplight stops. Be sure to check those out as well!

Coffee and Porn in the Morning
Words of Wisdom from the Scarf Princess
TTC Books & More
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words

Also, in case you missed it, on Valentine’s Day, The Book Bella shared bonus content not only from Strain, but also from books by Lisa Henry/Heidi Belleau, Andrea Speed, and Reesa Herberth. As far as Strain goes, I wrote a brief scene that pre-dates Strain, dealing with Joe and Toby and the genesis of their relationship. Be sure to check it out!

Since it’s still February, I am still Riptide’s Author of the Month. That means you can find an interview with me at Riptide’s site, and get Giving an Inch (The Professor’s Rule #1) for absolutely free! (it’s also available for free at Amazon, ARe and other retailers.) There are also significant savings on a number of my other titles, including An Inch at a Time (The Professor’s Rule #2), The Laird’s Forbidden Lover, and finally, pre-sales of Every Inch of the Way (The Professor’s Rule #4) and To The Very Last Inch (The Professor’s Rule #5) are only $0.99 each-67% off! If you pre-order at Riptide, you get to download the books two days in advance, which means they’ll be available at midnight this coming Friday!

Speaking of pre-0rders, Saugatuck Summer is available at Riptide now, as well, for 22% off. If you’re a reviewer, the ARC is also available at NetGalley, so go ahead and check that out. Saugatuck Summer is coming in May.

Whew! That was a lot of links.

On the professional level, I really don’t have much of a basis of comparison for how well Strain is performing. It has broken the Top 10 Bestsellers in Gay Fiction and the Top 20 in Sci-Fi > Post-Apocalyptic over at Amazon. Of course, seeing as how the book is a Riptide release, I have no way of monitoring sales in real time like I do with my self-pubs, except for the Amazon sales via NovelRank, which isn’t always accurate. I do know that it is much higher in the rankings at Amazon than any of my other releases have ever gotten, and has stayed there longer.

BestsellerIcon100X100 It has also made its way to #15 on the All Romance eBooks bestsellers list, which, again, is better than any of my other titles have done. And it is on the Riptide best sellers list for this month, along with three of the five The Professor’s Rule titles (no doubt that has something to do with all the discounts!) The reviews at Goodreads and elsewhere continue to be overwhelmingly positive. All in all, this has definitely been my most successful title so far, and I’m absolutely thrilled to see it doing so well. It was a long, hard slog to get this book to market, but I’m glad it’s finally here.

I’m sure I had something else to say about all this, but apparently I’ve lost track of what all I meant to say in this post. All in all, it’s been a great first week for Strain, and I’m thankful for all of you who have come along for the ride.

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The #STRAIN #blogtour, last day: catch a sneak peek at BANE, the prequel to STRAIN @BookReviewsMore @RiptideBooks #mmromance

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Today I wrap up the Strain blog tour over at Book Reviews & More by Kathy with a very special post: namely, the first chapter of the (rough draft) prequel to Strain, titled Bane.

While Strain deals with the aftermath of the apocalyptic plague, some ten years after it begins, Bane deals with its genesis. It looks at the political state of the world leading up to the catastrophic decision to implement Project Juggernaut, and focuses on a few pivotal people involved in the events leading up to and immediately following the beginning of the plague. You’ll meet some new players, as well as encountering a few familiar names from Strain.

This book is still very much a rough draft WIP-not even my editor has seen it yet-so anything in the excerpt I’m sharing is subject to extreme revision. So take it all with a grain of salt.

Author TM Smith is also hosting a spotlight stop, as well as sharing her review of Strain, so be sure to drop by her site as well. Remember that each stop you comment on qualifies you for another entry into the drawing for one of three ebook copies of Impulse: The Complete Trilogy. The contest will remain open until February 28, with the drawing to be held on March 1.

Finally, in an interesting twist, Every Inch of the Way (The Professor’s Rule #4) has released over a week early at All Romance eBooks. It’s still available for pre-sale at Riptide, as well, and on sale at that, but if you want to get your hot little hands on it even earlier, here’s your chance! Also tune in the week after next for the Every Inch of the Way/To the Very Last Inch (The Professor’s Rule #4 & #5) blog tour, during which Heidi Belleau and I will be sharing a complete bonus story from The Professor’s Rule, divided into pieces among the stops.

Thank you to everyone who has hosted and participated in the Strain blog tour. This has been an incredible amount of fun!

 

 

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The #Strain #BlogTour Day 2! @DarienMoya @3ChicksAftrDark #mmromance @RiptideBooks

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Today, for Part Two of the Strain blog tour, I’m swinging by Pants-Off Reviews to talk some more about Project Juggernaut, particularly what happened to the Juggernaut troops after the plague. After they overthrew the military government, the civilian population could turn their attention to rebuilding their lives, but not the Jugs. So what did they do instead?

I’m also stopping at 3 Chicks After Dark to discuss the uses of sex content in books. I had actually written this article (titled “Does a sex scene have to be sexy?”) before I read the advance copy of Janette’s review, but once I saw her review, it was so apropos to some of the remarks she made, I knew I wanted to share it there.

Finally, Jody at Words of Wisdom from the Scarf Princess has shared her review of Strain and is hosting a brief spotlight stop, where you’ll get yet another chance to register for the giveaway!

Remember that anyone who comments to the blog tour posts will be entered to win one of three ebook copies of Impulse: The Complete Trilogy, so be sure to share your thoughts and questions about the articles with me.

Check out the Strain Blog Tour schedule for more chances to enter. Please be sure to include some way to contact you with your comments (if not email, then a Twitter or Facebook ID will also work.) The contest will be open until February 28, with the drawing being held on March 1st. Good luck!

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Join me today @TheJeepDiva! #Strain #BlogTour #mmromance @RiptideBooks

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Today, for Part One of the Strain blog tour, I’m over at The Jeep Diva discussing some of the world-building behind Strain. In particular, this article focuses on Project Juggernaut, which started the plague that doomed humanity. The article can be found after Vanessa’s review of Strain, which you should definitely check out as well. 😀

Remember that anyone who comments to the blog tour posts will be entered to win one of three ebook copies of Impulse: The Complete Trilogy, so be sure to share your thoughts and questions about the article with me.

And just to give you another shot at entering, today Cup-o-Porn is also hosting a spotlight stop for the tour, so be sure to comment there as well!

Check out the Strain Blog Tour schedule for more chances to enter. Please be sure to include some way to contact you with your comments (if not email, then a Twitter or Facebook ID will also work.) The contest will be open until February 28, with the drawing being held on March 1st. Good luck!

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Night Owl Reviews names “Inertia” a Top Pick #mmromance #review #4.5 stars

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It’s always nice to get a review on something you released quite a while back. You can find Inertia here, or check out Impulse as a complete set, here!

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Woohoo! Acceleration and Velocity both make it as runners-up in the #RainbowAwards

Rainbow Awards - Best LGBT Erotic Romance

Once I knew I was up against Heidi Cullinan and L.A. Witt, I knew I didn’t have a chance of placing first or second, but I’m beyond thrilled. Acceleration tied in 4th place with Finding Master Right by L.A. Witt, and Velocity ties for 7th place with two other books, which is more than I expected. Congratulations to Heidi for placing first, and to all the other finalists!

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30% #rebate @AllRomance ebooks today! #mm #romance

FIND ME HERE AT ARe!

If you wanted to get my Impulse books, or any of my Riptide releases, today is a good day to jump on that. ARe is having a 30% rebate today only, plus there’s that “Buy 10, Get 1 Free” thing at ARe, so now would be a good time to chip away at your requisite 10.

 

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Finally! The #GRL2013 recap post

Okay, so I’ve been pretty much in my cave since getting back from GayRomLit. Not like I’m a terribly social person to begin with, and after five days of more social exposure than I normally get in any given year, I’ve been having some “me” time. Plus editing and writing. No kidding, this is my status message on GoogleTalk right now:

Editing and/or writing. Unless your name is God or Phil Coulson, you cannot possibly have anything to say worth disturbing me for.

So yeah, there’s that, too. Strain edits are progressing apace and it’s really exciting to think that there’s only three and a half months left until it releases. Even better, review copies and an excerpt should be going out within the next month, I imagine, so I can finally start to feel like this book, which has comprised a significant chunk of my creative energy since September last year, is finally getting into people’s hands and I can start getting the pay-off (by which I mean feedback and just knowing people are reading it, which is way more important than money for my creative soul.)

Edits are also in their final stages for Inch by Inch: The Professor’s Rule #3, and I believe we’ll have cover art and more information on that very soon. Heidi and I have begun on TPR #4 and if all goes according to plan, the series will wrap up with TPR #5.

I would love to say I have pictures to share of GRL, but honestly, I’m not a camera person. Like, if something is happening around me, my first thought is never “oh, grab the camera, take a picture!” so I actually don’t have that many pictures. We’ll have to settle for words.

My journey began on Tuesday, when I flew out of PDX with Devon Rhodes. Anne Tenino was on our same flight, but on Wednesday, so we didn’t get to travel with her. Devon booked a car from the airport rather than taking a taxi or MARTA, for which I ended up being extremely grateful because I decided to be very frugal with my packing space and managed to get everything I needed to take (minus the books and business cards that shipped from the printer right to the hotel) in a carry-on size suitcase and my backpack/laptop case, which meant that what I did have was VERY HEAVY. Especially that damn backpack. If I’d had to haul that thing on my back and take MARTA I probably would have cried.

Traveling in the car with us as well was Rick R. Reed, who had been waiting in the airport after his flight from Seattle. GRL peeps were already starting to congregate in the lobby bar of the Melia when we got there, including the lovely P.D. Singer, whom I’ve been blessed to see three frickin’ times this year. I also got to meet Eden Winters and EM Lynley, as well as a handful of others. The most interesting conversation I had that night, hands-down, has to go to Anel Viz, who sat with me and gave me some really lovely feeback, both flattering and constructive, on my Impulse books, which it turned out he’d read. He’s a fascinating guy and meeting him was an absolute pleasure.

Wednesday was the Writer’s Workshop, which was great except that the air conditioning in the hotel was set to “meat locker.” Well, not according to everyone else, but I was freezing. I kept ducking into the “powder room” area of the women’s restroom because it had all these big, warm vanity lights that kept it considerably warmer than the other rooms. The reason I mention this is because when I get cold, I go into hibernation mode and all I want to do is sleep. I swear I’m part reptile or something. Coupled with an already critical sleep deficit, I decided to pass on the third session of the day and catch a nap, but before I did that, I attended the luncheon where KA Mitchell was the guest speaker, and *sigh* I would sell my soul to be able to be that interesting and glib when speaking publicly.

The fourth session, I was a panelist on the BDSM panel, moderated by Sarah Frantz. There I got to finally meet LA Witt and Rachel Haimowitz, and KA Mitchell was on that panel as well. Being the final session of the day, only six people attended, but that was fine because it was intimate and we had a lot of fun and there are six people-including my esteemed co-author Heidi Belleau-who probably now know far more personal details about me than they ever wanted, since I was on the panel as a person who actually is into BDSM in real life.

Wednesday night, Riptide hosted a dinner for all the authors and employees who managed to attend, so there were a lot more people I got to meet, including Cat Grant, LC Chase, Aleks Voinov, Abi Roux, Marie Sexton, Alex Whitehall and Ally Blue, and Riptide’s new marketing guru, Keturah Jenkins. I ended up sitting across from Ally at the table and she was just a wonderful person to talk to over dinner.

Lots of people went out Wednesday night, but by the time I got back to the hotel I discovered my feet were swelling rather alarmingly. Like, I never was that swollen even when I was pregnant. So I decided to take it easy and stuck to my room.

Thursday morning launched GRL proper, and the first function-aside from the newbie informational session hosted by Jay of JoyfullyJay, was the Supporting Author’s Signing event. I had ordered a number of print copies of the Impulse books that I could offer for sale, and I also had coupon codes for ebook downloads. Riptide was giving away copies of Giving an Inch (TPR #1) as swag, complete with excerpts from An Inch at a Time, Apple Polisher and Strain in the back. There I got to meet Allison Hickman, who has been just lovely and supportive and kind here and on other social media. It’s always an ego boost to get to sign autographs, especially being someone so new to the genre whom a lot of people haven’t even heard of, but even more gratifying was the number of people who remarked on Kerry Chin’s artwork on the Impulse covers. I’m so proud of those, I really can’t get enough of hearing how beautiful they are. You’d think I was the frickin’ artist. Everyone kept remarking how sweltering the signing room was, and I was all, “No no! This is the first time I’ve been comfortable since I got here!” Me and my inner thermostat, I tell ya.

At the signing I got to sit next to Anna Martin, the author of Tattoos & Teacups, and listen to her absolutely adorable accent for two hours. That was a lot of fun.

By the time lunch rolled around, the swelling in my feet had escalated from alarming to “Um, do I need to see a doctor for this?” P.D. Singer, a pharmacist by profession, took a look at them and asked me very earnestly if I had a history of congestive heart failure. I’m not even kidding. Seriously, the things looked like balloons and all the tissue from my shins to just about where my toes began had the consistency of molding clay. So I ended up missing Anne Tenino’s reading and the rest of the Thursday afternoon events in favor of putting my feet up on a huge stack of pillows while P.D. Singer graciously brought me lunch so I wouldn’t have to order room service. By evening the swelling had gone down enough that I ventured out to the Juke Joint party, but I was still trying to stay off my feet as much as possible, and where I was staying off my feet was not where anyone I knew-or anyone to strike up a conversation with at all, really-was lingering, so I only stayed about an hour. Then I went back to my room to put my feet up again and fight with the hotel wifi some more.

God, the hotel wifi. I could write a whole post about that alone. It was horrible. Around Friday evening or so, I made a tweet entreating the hotel internet to get fucked with a rusty pitchfork, and I think just about everyone following the #GRL2013 tag favorited or retweeted it, so I was definitely not alone in my struggles. I would pass through an area where my phone managed to connect long enough for me to get a text from my husband and by the time I could stop and reply, I wouldn’t be able to connect anymore (no, I don’t have a data plan on my new iPhone; I almost never use it anywhere where there isn’t wifi, so there’s no sense paying for one.)

Luckily, keeping my feet elevated for the best part of a whole day did the trick and the swelling had gone down by Friday morning. I spent the morning in a bit of a panic because one of the Fun Faire events was a welcome for the supporting authors hosted by Marie Sexton and Lori Witt, for which I’d been invited to do a reading. I’ve only ever done one other reading, and that was in September up in Seattle, and I kind of bumbled it a bit. I REALLY didn’t want to make a fool of myself, so I spent the morning practicing. P.D. Singer promised me I was among friends who would understand if I stumbled or stammered, as did Lori and Marie, but still. However, the reading went very well, I think. I wish I had a video of it, but to the best of my knowledge, no one was taking video of that particular event (if someone was, PLEASE hook me up!) If I had a video, it would be your first look at Chapter Three of Strain, which is where things begin to get really interesting. As it is, you’ll have to wait for the excerpt from Riptide. Sorry. So I was really happy with that event, even if I didn’t win the bag of Tucker Springs print editions. The next event was hosted by Riptide, a competition where you had to guess a book’s title based on an excerpt of a sex scene where the significant give-away details had been altered to make it unrecognizable. I managed to score a paperback of Abi Roux’s Shock & Awe, which was very enjoyable and worth its weight in gold for bragging rights to my BFF, who is a C&R addict.

Friday night was the Dine With An Author dinner, and I ended up sitting with some absolutely lovely people there, including Anna Zabo. The woman sitting to my left-whose name I can’t remember now, I’m so sorry!-actually lives in the area of Michigan where I used to live, so when she asked me about my upcoming releases and I mentioned Saugatuck Summer, she was like, “You mean, as in Saugatuck, Michigan?” and that was really awesome because she knew exactly what I was talking about and why Saugatuck is such a perfect setting for a series of m/m coming-of-age and romance stories.

After dinner, there was the Dreamspinner cocktail party, where we got to see everyone dressed to the nines. I was looking for a place to sit down with my drink and dessert and a party of three other women asked if they could sit at the empty table I’d chosen because all the others were full, and what followed was the sort of socializing I almost never do, which is comfortable, engaging conversation with virtual strangers. Usually I hide in my shell like a turtle until I know someone well enough to venture out, but that evening it was effortless and I really loved sitting and talking with them. After they had moved on, Melanie Marshall, who reviewed the Impulse books over at JoyfullyJay as well as her own blog, made room for me at her table and I got to talk to them for a while until it was time to call it a night so I could go back to my room and call my son and husband before they went to bed.

I’d say of the entire retreat, that party was the most remarkable for me, precisely because of that socialization thing. I spent an ENTIRE EVENING socializing with people I didn’t know. That never happens to me. I am absolutely incapable of bringing myself to break the ice with strangers, but from dinner onward, I didn’t hang out with a single person with whom I had any sort of acquaintance, aside from an email or two I had exchanged with Melanie thanking her for her lovely reviews.

Saturday morning, I attended P.D. Singer’s reading and then hung out in the bookseller’s room with the Riptide peeps for a while. I went out to a late breakfast with P.D., Eden Winters and a couple others, and then I had an appointment with Nicole Forcine, who aside from being an author herself is a member of the Happily Ever After video book club on YouTube. I hadn’t heard of this club before, but I’m definitely a fan now. Being the only member of the four of them who would be attending GRL, Nicole got tapped to do some author interviews and vlogging, and I arranged to do an interview with her. It just so happened that Anne Tenino was also available at the same time, so the Ladies From Portland (minus the lovely Devon Rhodes) did a joint interview. You can find that here:

The interview was a lot of fun, and I’d never met Nicole before but OMG is she a hoot. I just adore her now. It also turned out that her book club had covered Giving an Inch just a few weeks before. You can find that video here:

The night was Totally Bound’s Heaven & Hell masquerade party, for which I got to dust off a very old outfit and add a mask. I don’t have any really good pictures of myself from the party that night, so here’s one from when I bought the gown about thirteen years ago:

gown2I don’t look as good in the gown these days, because I no longer fit into the corset I was wearing under it in this picture, and Spanx just don’t achieve that same effect (namely, pushing your boobs up so high you could wear them as earrings.)

I also had some absolutely amazing old-fashioned shoes laced up with ribbons, which I ended up taking off because Sarah Frantz-God only knows how; I suspect mind-control powers-managed to get me out onto the dance floor. So I spent a good chunk of the party dancing with Sarah, Heidi Belleau, Keturah Jenkins, Alex Whitehall, and Nicole Forcine, who is just a party animal.

I was going to go to the after-hours hangout in the pub, but then I decided it would be better for me to try to pack that night instead of rushing to do it Saturday morning. So I was pretty much almost completely packed by Saturday morning, which meant I got to linger over the farewell brunch with people I didn’t get to spend a lot of time talking to during the conference. And then I got to hang out with them some more in the hotel lobby while I had lunch and waited until it was time for the car service to take Devon, Anne and I back to the airport.

So. I met a lot of people, connected with several others I already knew, and even managed to socialize with some of them after I hit my stride. All in all it was a really great time, even if it was somewhat overwhelming at times. I probably would have gotten more out of the early days if my body hadn’t decided to get weird and turn my feet into inflatable rafts. I think next year in Chicago, if I can manage it, I will try to go as a featured author, and hopefully I will feel less like a clueless newbie and hit my stride a lot sooner.

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Taking care of business before #GRL2013

So, Tuesday I will be heading to Atlanta for my first-ever GayRomLit retreat. I will admit I’m a little nervous because this is the first time since he was born that I will be away from my six-year-old for that long. Until last month at GRNW in Seattle, I’d never been away from him longer than over a single night, and even then he was just a mile away at his grandmother’s house. Now I’m going to be across the country from him for five nights. Eep!

Also, I have absolutely no idea what to expect from GRL. I know I will be on a panel at the writer’s workshop on Wednesday afternoon, the BDSM panel that Sarah Frantz will be moderating. So I’ll have at least one opportunity to make an idiot of myself publicly. I think at least part of my fear is that I didn’t know until very late in the game about the YahooGroup that most of the GRL stuff was being discussed on, so I think I missed some pretty significant announcements and information. Thus, I’m clueless.

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But before I go, some business to take care of. In case you have missed my tweets on the subject (and Heidi Belleau’s and Riptide’s) we have a sort of kink meme going on for some audience participation in the third Professor’s Rule book. This book will take us back to the “present day” in James and Carson’s lives, after the short trip into exploring their past in TPR #2. (Yes, I like non-linear storytelling. I feel like it often gives a narrative a sort of mobility that otherwise it wouldn’t have.) It’s time for James to re-unite with his Professor, and also for him to keep his date with menswear salesman Satish. Last week we were taking nominations for the sort of kinks you’d like to see in the next book, and this week we’ve narrowed the list to five and you get to vote on them. Those five are:

1. Voyeurism
2. Fire Play
3. Needle Play
4. Breath Play
5. Sensory Deprivation

You can go here to take the survey. Thanks to The Jeep Diva for hosting this contest.

As for GRL, I will have some items available for free and for purchase there. I will have coupon codes to give away for Inertia, as well coupon codes you can purchase for downloads of Acceleration and Velocity, and for the All-in-One ebook volume of the Impulse trilogy. I will also have paperbacks of all three books available, 30 of Inertia and 10 each (I think? Maybe 15?) of Acceleration and Velocity. Riptide will also have a free version of Giving an Inch (TPR #1) to hand out, which will include excerpts from An Inch at a Time (TPR #2), Heidi Belleau’s Apple Polisher, and my upcoming release, Strain. So be sure to grab that! For autographs and whatnot, I’ll be in the supporting authors session, not the featured authors. So look for me there!

Annnd I think that is all my business to attend to before I leave, so I’d better get back to researching how to pack a week’s worth of stuff into a carry-on sized suitcase. Fun!

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Acceleration and Velocity are both Rainbow Awards finalists! #mmromance

FinalistMD

 

Both Acceleration and Velocity made it into the finalist round of the Rainbow Awards for LGBT Erotic Romance. I can’t say how thrilled I am that they have gotten this far. The other books in the category are amazing and it’s stunning to be ranked among them! Congratulations to all the other finalists!

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Announcing Impulse: The Complete Trilogy

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Some of you may have noticed that the individual volumes of the Impulse trilogy have been discounted, or are in the process of being discounted (a couple sites haven’t updated yet.)

This is to bring the price of the individual volumes a little lower to make them more in-line with my new digital “box set”-the complete trilogy in a single volume. For those of you who have been holding off to buy all the entire trilogy in one fell swoop, this is a really great deal. This digital box set will be $9.99, a $3.00 value versus buying the volumes individually.

I’m in the process of uploading the new files to the various sites. Look for this to go on sale around Thursday, June 27, 2013.

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Vote for Acceleration in the December Rainbow Awards cover contest.

Alas, Inertia didn’t make the cut from the November round, but there are still chances to recognize Kerry Chin’s gorgeous work on the Impulse trilogy. For the next two weeks, voting is open for covers released in December, of which Acceleration was one. Drop by and vote for your favorite covers and let’s get Kerry the recognition she deserves!

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Vote for Inertia in the Rainbow Awards cover contest!

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Because the print version of Inertia was released in November of 2012, it’s in this year’s round of voting for the cover contest instead of last year’s, which is where the book itself was entered. At any rate, voting for the covers released in November is going on now, so let’s give the brilliant Kerry Chin’s artwork some recognition!

http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/1992287.html

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Easter #sale 30% #discount @RainbowEbooks this weekend #mmromance #gay #romance #ebooks #amreading

Rainbow Ebooks is having an Easter sale this weekend, 30% off throughout the store, including Inertia, Acceleration and Velocity. Get ’em cheap!

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Filed under Acceleration, Announcements, Inertia, News for Released Titles, Velocity

30% off all 3 Impulse books @RainbowEbooks! #mmromance #gay #romance #amreading #discount

Rainbow Ebooks is having a sale today (it might even be all weekend, the flier didn’t say) so here is your change to get 30% off all three volumes of Impulse.

Enjoy!

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Writing a novel in three parts: Let’s get some things straight

As I’ve said in the past, though I often refer to Impulse as a trilogy for the sake of simplicity, it’s actually more accurate to call it a novel in three parts, much like The Lord of the Rings. Which is why on the cover of each novel, it very clearly says “Impulse, Book One” or Book Two or whatever.

I remember back in…2001 the The Fellowship of the Ring movie came out, the very first day it opened, on a message board I hung out on frequently at the time, someone went rant about it. This person was offended that she didn’t get the entire LOTR story in a single film. Even though it had been all over the media for a good four years or so that there would be three films, even though the original LOTR novel was divided into three parts. Even though she must have had some passing familiarity with LOTR prior to that since she was, by her own adamant admission “a HUGE Arwen/Aragorn shipper.”

She complained that she’d been ripped off, how this was just a cheap ploy by a Hollywood studio to bilk the consumer out of more money, how she wanted the ending RIGHT NOW, etc, etc, etc.

What she didn’t take into account was all the reasoning behind the decision to make the story into three films.

Why did Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema choose to make three movies? Well, for a number of reasons, most of which boiled down to the fact that there was no way to tell the whole tale and do it justice in accordance with Tolkien’s vision and the expectations of the devout fans in the length of a single film. Of course, they could have done it, had the film been ten hours long, but I think most reasonable people agree that 3-3.5 hours is pretty much the ceiling for the length of a film before the audience just becomes fatigued. A decision was made that it was better for the story, and better for the audience, to divide the story into parts and release them in sequence.

Now, I haven’t the ego to claim to be in league with the storytelling genius of Tolkien or the movie-making genius of Peter Jackson. Nonetheless, some of the same reasoning went into my decision to make Impulse into three parts.

First question: Why did I decide to split the story into three parts?

The first reason is narrative flow. I intended from the very start to deal with the stages of a new relationship in three very distinct chunks, in keeping with the three-act structure of any story: beginning, middle, end.

The first chunk is the “coming together” phase: flirting, ascertaining the other party’s interest, overcoming doubts to find the courage to reach other, and initiating sex.

The second chunk would be the “honeymoon” phase of the first 2-3 months of a new relationship, when the sexual chemistry is off the scale and the world pretty much just revolves around your need to bond and cement this new partnership.

The third chunk would be the settling in phase, where the immediacy of lust and the need for the other person cools down enough to enable the partners to stop living in the now and start looking both toward the future and toward the outside, at the issues facing them beyond the perimeter of the bubble they’ve been living in.

The second answer is optimal book length. When I discovered how many words were involved in such a story (I anticipated about 50,000 works for each act and came in pretty close at 46K, 48K and 58K respectively) I had to figure out if that was a feasible ebook length, or if it was too unwieldy.

In my research, I discovered a lot of people opining that the optimal ebook length was 50-80K. Now, this meant I could have made two books out of it and still fallen within that window, but it would have broken up the narrative flow in the wrong places. How would LOTR have worked out if it had been two books, one of which ended in the middle of what is the arc of The Two Towers? How would the original Star Wars trilogy have worked out if it had been two movies, the first of which wrapped up midway through the action of The Empire Strikes Back? There is a pattern to these things, which is why the three-act story arc is an absolute necessity. Beginning, middle, end. A duology doesn’t work nearly as well because it defies that mandatory storytelling structure. So, I had three very clear-cut ~50K novels.

Second question: Admit it, you broke it into three parts to scam the readers of more money, right?

No. From a business perspective, breaking the novel into three parts was a very good choice for me because otherwise I could not have afforded a professional editor. My editor charges $100-125 per 10,000 words depending on if she’s doing developmental editing or line editing with developmental features. This means it would have cost me $1500-$1850 to have the entire work edited as a single edition. If that had been the case, these books would never have happened, because I just could not have afforded to go that deep in the hole. By breaking the story into three chunks, I could get them edited in ~$500-600 increments.

I went into the hole for the first one, and all my sales from that first book I collected to pay for the production of the second book (and even then I still had to supplement with my birthday money to get the job done.) The third book is the first time this has become an entirely self-sustaining enterprise, and I haven’t even gotten out of the hole yet.

Between editing, cover art, formatting and design, I have spent $2200 to produce this three-part novel and I’ve only made about $1600 of that back so far. In fact, I still owe my family’s household budget $500 for the editing of the first book.

If money came into play in the decision to make this story three parts, it was not to bilk readers out of more money, it was to keep production expenses in reasonable chunks so that I could afford to produce at all.

Another reason to break it into three parts is pricing and salability. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Dean Wesley Smith, he’s pretty much the guru where indie publishing is concerned. Let’s take a look what he recommends for ebook pricing:

— Novels

Front list, meaning brand new. Over 50,000 words. $7.99

Shorter front list novels, meaning 30,000 to 50,000 words. $6.99

Backlist novels, meaning already published by a traditional publisher. $6.99

According to this guru in the industry, Inertia and Acceleration are underpriced by a dollar each, and Velocity is underpriced by two dollars.

Had I published the entire novel in a single unit, I would have had to charge $7.99. As an author no one has ever heard of before. With no opportunity to get a “backlist bump” with each subsequent release because there would be no backlist.

To get more genre-specific, Riptide Publishing uses the following pricing structure:

Under 5,000 words: $.99
5,000 to 9,999 words: $1.99
10,000 to 17,999 words: $2.99
18,000 to 29,999 words: $3.99
30,000 to 39,999 words: $4.99
40,000 to 49,999 words: $5.99
50,000 to 69,999 words: $6.99
70,000 to 89,999 words: $7.99
90,000+ words: $8.99

How many books do you think I would have sold had I priced the volume at $7.99-8.99? As a completely brand new, unheard-of author? Enough to ever make my investment back? No, of course not. No one would pay that amount for a book by someone they’ve never heard of before.

So again, we come back to the point that this novel-in-three-parts would never have existed if I had tried to publish it as a single volume. It would have been too expensive to produce, and I would never have earned back my investment to produce it.

Now, in case anyone thinks my books are overpriced, allow me to point out that my pricing is right in line or a little below what Riptide uses, as shown above. Need more?

  • Dreamspinner Press prices most of their novels around the length of mine at $6.99.
  • Samhain charges $5.50-$6.50 for novel-length new releases.
  • Stormmoon Press charges $6.99 for a 75K word novel and $9.99 for a 107K novel.
  • MLR charges $8.99 for a 123K novel, $7.99 for 77K, and $5.99 for 39K
  • Torquere charges $6.99 for novels around the length of Inertia.

The price I have set for my novels is at or below industry standard for the m/m romance genre.

Third question: but you are still making bank, right?

You couldn’t be more wrong. I am, quite literally, working for free.

What I’ve listed above, the $2200 to produce these three novels and the $1600 I’ve recouped so far? That’s just with concern to paying for the external services to produce the novel, editing, cover art, layout, etc. It doesn’t even take into consideration paying a wage to myself. Let’s refer back to Dean Wesley Smith on the labor cost involved in writing a novel.

I find Smith’s estimate there of “paying” yourself $50/hour to be a little on the high end. After all, $50/hour for a 40-hour a week job would be over $100,000/year. Let’s say I wanted to make a more reasonable “supplement my family and keep us afloat” wage of $30,000/year, which is what I was making when I got laid off from my last job. I would need to pay myself ~$14.50/hour.

So. According to Smith math, 1000 words = 1 hour. Therefore 150K words (not including time spent editing, revising, marketing, etc; I actually work 14-16 hours a day right now) would be 150 hours. At $14.50/hour, I would need to pay myself $2175. That doubles the production cost of this 150K word novel to almost $4400.

Again, I’ve made $1600 so far. Eight months since I first published. $1600. Out of a $2200 monetary investment and a $2200 time investment. Not only am I still in the hole for the services I paid for to produce these books, I’m working for free. I have not made a single dime for myself.

That’s important to understand. What you have paid for my books goes to pay the booksellers (Amazon, ARe, etc) and my editor and my cover artist and my layout/design/formatting guy. Not a single cent of it has yet gone to pay me for the time I’ve spent writing the book. Not a single cent.

I’m working for free. And I will be for quite some time yet. I’d earn more flipping burgers for minimum wage at McDonalds.

I wrote those 150,000 words out of love for storytelling, not to get rich. I wrote them out of love for this particular story and these particular characters. I wrote them because I had a beautiful story I felt I needed to share with the world. I separated them into three parts so that I could feasibly bring them to the public, because otherwise it would not have been feasible for me to have done so.

That’s it. I write because I love to write, not because it makes me rich. Hell, it doesn’t even put food on my table.

Never at any point in time was my decision to divide the novel into three parts an effort to scam anyone out of more money. It was to make the novel salable and get it into the hands of the public and begin building up name recognition for myself while still making at least a token effort at recouping my monetary investment, if not my time investment.

Now, did I handle the denouement of Book One badly? Yes. I freely admit that. I was utterly at a loss as to how to end that because at the point where it ended, that WAS the close of the first act, the same way Frodo and Sam striking out on their own toward Mordor was the end of The Fellowship of the Ring. There WAS NO MORE STORY LEFT TO TELL in the first act. There simply wasn’t.

Was it clumsy? Yes, but it was the end of the first act.

The second act would begin the very next time the two characters saw each other, which would then be the beginning of the “Honeymoon” phase (launching, not without a hefty amount of symbolism, with their first act of intercourse.)

It wasn’t an optimal way to end Book One and I’ve taken my lumps for it left, right, and center. Perhaps if I’d been able to afford another round of developmental edits, my editor and I could have brainstormed a better denouement, but it was what it was.

It was never an attempt to write a cliffhanger. It was not sequel bait. And it certainly wasn’t an effort to con anyone out of more money. It was the organic ending of the first act of a three-part story. Full stop.

So. Perhaps now people will understand a little better why the novel is structured in three parts the way it is.

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Velocity #paperback on #sale @Amazon #mm #gay #erotica #romance #mmromance #amreading

I’m not entirely certain why Amazon has discounted the paperback of Velocity by over $5 but it’s on sale right now, so by all means, if you want a physical copy in your hot little hands, grab it while the grabbing is good!

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15% off Velocity today @RainbowEbooks #mm #romance #erotica #mmromance #gay #ebook #newrelease #discount

As always, Rainbow Ebooks has some awesome deals as part of their Totally Tuesday promotion. This week, they’re featuring New Releases for 15% off, which means it’s an excellent time to snag a copy of Velocity!

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LAST DAY Read an #Ebook Week! Inertia is #free Mar 3-9 @Smashwords! #mmromance #gay #romance #freebook #amreading #erotica #mm

ebookglassesThis week, the first book of my Impulse trilogy, Inertia, is available through SmashWords for free. To get your free copy, simply purchase Inertia on SmashWords using the coupon code RW100.

Note, this does not begin until SUNDAY MARCH 3, 2013. This offer only extends to Inertia. Be sure to take this opportunity to get familiar with Derrick, Gavin, and their lovely story!

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Today I’m over at Coffee and Porn in the Morning…

…sharing a scene from Velocity. Be sure to check it out!

Also, for those of you who read my last post, apparently Amazon and Barnes & Noble are both really on the ball this week. *cough cough*

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The rolling out of Velocity begins today

So, for those of you who don’t know exactly how self-publishing works, here’s some insight.

Those nicely coordinated releases where a book hits everywhere at once? It doesn’t happen for me.

The problem is, is that except for a few places (namely Kobo, ARe and RainbowEbooks) unless you’re a major publishing house, you cannot upload an ebook to be released at a future date, the creating a pre-order page or even just obtaining a URL to which you can direct buyers to in advance. At Amazon, Barnes & Noble, SmashWords, and I believe Itunes, the moment it is uploaded and approved, it goes live.

This makes it very hard to conduct a coordinated release. If you upload to ARe and RainbowBooks and SmashWords, it goes live immediately. But Amazon might take 12-24 hours (48 internationally) to approve your upload and create your product page. B&N and Kobo can take up to 72, and Itunes can take a couple weeks.

Believe me, this makes it tough to coordinate release-day reviews, because what I need to do is get the ARC to reviewers weeks in advance, but they won’t have purchase links to put on their post. So then I upload the files as close to release day as possible in order to have them approved and have a URL for the book at Amazon or wherever, and then email the purchase links to reviewers sometimes less than 24 hours before their review is due to go live. It’s really quite annoying and life would be infinitely easier if every site would let you upload in advance and schedule a future date for the files to go live.

The point to all this rambling is to inform you that today I will begin uploading to Amazon and B&N. The files have already been uploaded and approved at Kobo, but of course, there I can schedule an offset release date. The files have also been uploaded to Itunes as of several days ago, but last I checked they hadn’t yet been approved for distribution and might not be for some time yet.

What this means is that Velocity might go live on Amazon and B&N sometime today or tomorrow, before the “official” release date. So if you’re an early bird, you might just be able to snag a copy.

If you’re holding off for ARe or Rainbow Ebooks, I’m sorry but those will not be going live until Saturday. The reason for this is that my sales took a significant hit with the release of Acceleration going the pre-order route at ARe. It turns out, unless you’re a hugely popular, well-known author, people aren’t that interested in pre-ordering an upcoming release. The times at ARe that I’ve made the most sales have been when my book was both live and near the top of the New Releases list. If I were to upload it for pre-order, it would have fallen to the bottom of the New Releases list before it ever actually went live. So, I’m holding off on those sites and will upload and release there on Saturday, the official release date.

Happy hunting!

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