News

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So many stories, so little time

Our house — 5 bedrooms in nearly 2 acres of established garden and lawn, with a separate studio, in one of the loveliest commuter towns in the country

Life is frantically busy. We have several major projects on at work, all of which require effort from me this week. My beloved and I are preparing our house to go on the market in three weeks, just in time for all the trees to be in blossom (so removing clutter by packing stuff I want to keep and giving the rest away, touching up paintwork and other minor repairs, weeding, etc etc). And on the book front, I have six projects running.

  1. The Belles’ box set has been proofread and the cover launch is in a fortnight. So Paradise Regained and its companion stories are almost at the ‘market, market, market’ stage of the process.
  2. Abbie’s Wish, for the Author’s of Main Street Christmas box set has been written, but I have some editing to do before I can send it to beta readers.
  3. The Beast Next Door, for the Belle’s Valentine box set, is due for first peer review on 1 October, but is currently on the back burner while I work on more urgent projects.
  4. House of Thorns is back from the editor (as I wrote a couple of weeks ago) and the rewrite is becoming urgent. I don’t know what publication date Scarsdale Publishing have in mind, but I do know I don’t want to hold them up!
  5. Never Kiss a Toad has chapters almost up to Sally’s return home, but they need review and I have to write more to bring the story to a close. Absolute priority for this week is to finish Chapter 61, a new Sally chapter that fits between the chapter Mari and I are currently publishing on Wattpad and the next prepared chapter.
  6. Unkept Promises is stalled while I clear the other projects, but Mia and Jules are not impressed with the decision and keep yammering at me.

My beloved says that my hobby is getting out of hand, and when I think about all the ideas crowding for their place, he might have a point.

And have I been doing book appearances, FaceBook parties, email outreach, and all the other book marketing stuff? Not so much. But I’ll be back, I promise. The goal is a smaller house on a smaller section. Less effort, and more time to write. Yay!

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Tea with readers

Join Jude Knight, the Duchess of Haverford, and an assortment of Jude’s heroines on FaceBook, to celebrate the opening of Jude’s new bookshop.

We’ll be on Jude Knight’s Regency World during Saturday New Zealand time, which is Friday afternoon and evening US time.

Come with your questions for Jude, the Duchess, or any of Jude’s female characters (the men will have their turn another time). Or comments. Or anything you wish.

We’ll have stories and discussions and games. Would love to see you here.

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Ch-ch-ch-changes

https://youtu.be/zbnJo88kuP8

Expect some changes in the way I sell my books in the coming months. I’ve been thinking and reading and collecting ideas. I’ve been planning and preparing. And I’m just about ready to start implementing.

Buy from the Jude Knight shop

First up, I’m going to open my own shop on this site, with print and ebooks available in formats to suit any reader, and direct-to-customer benefits.

  1. I’m planning to have new books available in my shop before you can get them anywhere else — and I hope to start with The Realm of Silence (publication date 22 May, so 15 May here).
  2. I’ll be adding extras such as deleted and background scenes to the books sold through my shop that you won’t get at any of the major e-retailers.
  3. Over time, I’ll have books here that aren’t available anywhere else.

Can you think of anything else you’d like to see me doing? I can’t discount ebooks over the Amazon price, because of authors agree, as a condition of using KDP, that they will not sell at a lower price elsewhere, but everything else is up for discussion.

Enjoy changes to my newsletter

I’m keeping the story, but I’m cutting back on content and putting most of it in links to stop cluttering your box. If you want to read more, click through. And I’m planning to feature more on other authors — their new releases, books I’ve been reading, interesting things happening in the world of historical romance.

How does that sound? Good? No? Please tell me what you’d like. My newsletter subscribers are my go-to-people, my strongest supporters and advocates. I care what you think, and I want to entertain you.

Watch me try to reduce my dependence on the megaliths

I have always tried to diversify: going wide instead of exclusive to Amazon, using Twitter and Goodreads and Wattpad instead of relying on Facebook. I’m more and more convinced this is the right approach, but I need to be more strategic about it. So here are some of the things I’m planning.

  • Making my website is up-to-date
    • giving the book pages a new look so they’re easier to explore now I have so many books
    • adding 1st chapters and excerpts for all my books
    • updating book information where it’s needed in the book pages
  • Rebalancing my sales through eretailers:
    • joining Kobo directly (I currently publish to them through Smashwords) so I can use their author marketing tools
    • exploring options for marketing specifically to Apple and Barnes & Noble customers
    • fixing the gaps in my sales information, such as editorial reviews on Amazon
  • Optimising print distribution:
    • looking again at Ingram publishing, and other options for reaching bookstores and libraries
  •  Finding new ways of getting excerpts (and full stories) in front of readers
    • revisiting Books + Main and getting ‘bites’ of all my books up there, then figuring out how to get readers to go looking
    • starting to post excerpts on FaceBook again
    • continuing to post on Wattpad
    • exploring ways to use Instagram with taglines
    • reopening the YouTube channel I started, maybe for book teasers, maybe for discussions with friends — what would you watch?
  • Being strategic about advertising, by keeping data on what works and what doesn’t
    • trying more Facebook ads
    • making some video book teasers
    • learning more about Amazon ads and trying them out
    • investing in advertising through e-newsletters.

And, of course, the big unspoken. Continuing to write and publish.

Do you have any suggestions? I’d love to hear them.

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Authors in Bloom, and zucchini fritters

Dianne Venetta_AIB Logo_2015

PROMOTION IS OVER: CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNERS

My ebook special edition has been won by ELF. Thank you to all who entered.

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Welcome to my blog. I’m delighted to be an author in bloom, though down here in New Zealand, we’re sliding into Winter while you Northern hemispherites are busy preparing your Spring gardens.

But it is never too early to plan what to do with the harvest, and prizes are don’t have to wait for any particular season. Am I right?

 Zucchinis, courgettes, or as we call them when I fail to pick every day, marrows

There cannot be an easier or more prolific crop on the face of the planet. Plant, feed (they love manure and compost), and — whatever you do — don’t forget. Once they start to produce, you’ll need to pick daily, or one day you’ll come out and find a marrow the size of Africa smothering everything else in the garden.

We usually plant several different types: green torpedoes, yellow torpedoes, and both green and yellow patty-pan shaped. Picked little, they slice into salads. I also liked them fried with a breakfast of eggs and bacon, or cut into small cubes in a salsa. You can grate them for fritters whatever the size, but bigger is faster.

This year’s marvelous discovery was that grated zucchini freezes really well. Most of the liquid drains out of the zucchini while it is defrosting, making even better fritters than the fresh stuff. Yum!

Zucchini fritters — Paleo and auto-immune system friendly

Tips: weigh your zucchini before grating. It’s easier. Get out as much water from the zucchinis as you can. This is really important. If you don’t freeze the grated zucchini, salt it to draw the moisture, then twist it in a cloth. If you have time, leave it overnight in paper towel. Really squeeze the last drop out of it.

1 pound of zucchini, grated and drained (about 2 of medium size)
2 green onions, thinly sliced
/4 cup almond flour (or arrowroot or coconut if nuts are a problem)
1/4 cup of freshly grated parmesan (if you can take dairy)
2 eggs (if you can’t take eggs, try this gelatin substitute)
salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp lemon juice

Put everything in a bowl and mix.

Heat two tablespoons of your choice of cooking oil in a pan and wait for the pan to get super hot. When the oil is shimmering, add spoonfuls of the mixture and fry until golden brown, about two to three minutes each side.

Serve with sour cream and extra green onions. Or with eggs, mushrooms, and homemade hollandaise sauce. Or with spinach and salmon. Or with applesauce. Or any way you like, really. We make up huge bowls of these and use them often.

GIVEAWAY

Comment on this blog post and note in the Rafflecopter that you’ve done so. That’s all you need to do to be in the draw to win your choice of my prizewinner special edition ebooks, and answer the extra questions to be in the draw for an advance reader copy of The Realm of Silence, to be sent early in May.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

GRAND PRIZE

We are giving away a Kindle Fire or Nook (winner’s choice) along with a 2nd prize of $25 gift card to those who participate in the whole hop by visiting each and every spot and leaving a comment or email through the blog post or the giveaway.

Where to find out if you have won.

Winners will be posted on the first and last websites in the hop (Dianne Venetta and BloominThyme). I’ll also post my own winners here.

 

Hop along for more great tips, recipes, and giveaways



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The Orc ate my homework

The Gates of Rivendell

My apologies to you all for my neglect. I’ve been swanning around New Zealand having a marvelous time and ignoring the blog. We spent several days with PRH’s brother and his wife, then picked Caroline Warfield and her beloved up from the airport and showed them a few highlights of this island of our much cherished country.

Carol and Lizzi in the New Zealand bush

Our bush, our history, our thermal wonderlands, our mountains and lakes, and (at a number of different sites) our Lord of the Rings filming sites, including Hobbiton, Mordor, Rivendell, and Weta Workshop (who were responsible for the props and the special effects.

We also met up with Lizzi Tremayne, who drove through to Rotorua to join us at Rotorua’s buried village, site of my story Forged in Fire.

Carol and Beloved have left for the South Island, and I’m getting myself back into routine. The blog will be back to normal tomorrow.

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No looking back, no promises

Okay, I can learn from past errors. Last year’s letter to 2017 had exactly the opposite effect I intended. Instead of responding to my pep talk and improving over 2016, 2017 managed to exceed 2016’s ill effects in every way. Let’s not even go there.

Instead, let’s look forward. Here are my wishes for the coming year.

On a personal note, I hope 2017 will bring good health to me and mine. Above all, I pray for health, happiness, and peace within my family.

I look forward to the opportunity this year, as I untangle and resolve a mass of health issues, to spend more time with friends and less time just completing the next item on my daily lists.

But I love those lists. Thanks to them, in the worst year I have ever experienced, I’ve still kept up with the day job, published one novel and almost written another, published two lunch-time read collections and two other novellas, one new, and had novellas in three co-authored boxed sets. I haven’t done much else, but I have done that.

My target for 2018 is ten thousand words a week on a first draft of something. That’s around ten hours original writing a week, which is feasible. In 2017, I managed around half that. (Did I mention it has not been my favourite year of all time?)  But with better health and less stress, I’m hopeful I can do the ten thousand words, which will split out something like this:

  • the last 12,500 needed to finish The Realm of Silence
  • 60,000 for House of Thorns, a marriage of inconvenience story
  • five original anthology stories of between 15,000 and 20,000 words each for four different groups of authors
  • 40,000 to 50,000 more words to expand The Bluestocking and the Barbarian into a full-length novel
  • 80,000 for Concealed in Shadow, the sequel to Revealed in Mist
  • 80,000 for Unkept Promises, the fourth Golden Redepenning novel, which tells Mia’s story
  • 30,000 in subscriber-only newsletter stories, one every two months.

So that’s just under 400,000 words, leaving me a little in the tank for another project I have in mind, and for the things that steal time from beleaguered authors, such as selling the house we’re in, since we want to downsize before the end of the year.

I’m not going to say that’s the plan. Far be it from me to make an actual plan! And it certainly isn’t a promise. But it’s feasible, isn’t it? Bring on 2018, I say.

 

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Be joyful! It’s Christmas!

As the United Kingdom and then the United States and Canada wake up to Christmas Eve, here in New Zealand we are watching the sun go down with Christmas Day just a few hours away.

In our local parish, the vigil mass is over, which I reckon means Christmas is here, and certainly by the time you read this, I’ll either be at church or putting the finishing touches to the dinner.

So here’s the joyful song that sums up how I feel about Christmas.

It is an ancient Latin hymn, with the lyrics below (rough English translation after).

Gaudete, Gaudete!
Christus et natus
Ex maria virgine,
Gaudete!

(Rejoice, Rejoice!
Christ is born
Of the virgin Mary,
Rejoice!)

Tempus ad est gratiae,
Hoc quod optabamus;
Carmina laetitiae,
Devote redamus.

(It is now the time of grace
That we have desired;
Let us sing songs of joy,
Let us give devotion.)

Deus homo factus est,
Natura mirante;
Mundus renovatus est
A Christo regnante.

(God was made man,
And nature marvels;
The world was renewed
By Christ who is King.)

Ezechiellis porta
Clausa pertransitur;
Unde lux est orta
Salus invenitur.

(The closed gate of Ezechiel
Has been passed through;
From where the light rises
Salvation is found.)

Ergo nostra cantio,
Psallat iam in lustro;
Benedicat Domino:
Salus Regi nostro.

(Therefore let our assembly now sing,
Sing the Psalms to purify us;
Let it praise the Lord:
Greetings to our King.)

Merry Christmas to you all.

 

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Tea with Jude, one day late

I was not surprised to see her. She was sitting on the chair at the end of my bed, her favourite tea set on the butler’s tray my son-in-law made for my birthday years back. Her Grace is, of course, far too well bred to allow her irritation to show, apart from a slight flare to the aristocratic nostrils. Her every movement as she prepared a cup of tea, just the way I like it, was completely controlled, with a trained elegance that she had learned from the cradle.

I’d thought about her often during the day, wondering what her reaction would be to missing one of her Monday’s for Tea. And now I knew. She was here for an explanation.

She looked up from her task and met my eyes. “Tea, Jude?” A glance around the room, more habit than expectation. No, Eleanor, the Knight household does not run to servants, except the mechanical and electronic kind, two centuries away from your experience.

Beside me, my personal romantic hero slumbered on, as Eleanor, the Duchess of Haverford carried the tea to my beside table with her own aristocratic hands before resuming her seat and pouring a cup for herself.

”I trust your indisposition is minor,” she hinted, sweetly. I suppressed a smile at her assumption that only an illness or injury could have prevented me from making a priority of writing her regular weekly engagement with the denizens of the fictionsphere. It was not untrue, but I was pleased to reassure her.

”Indeed. I am almost fully recovered. The usual problem complicated by a fall and the demands of a busy season. I lost Sunday to bed rest, and have been trying to catch up without overdoing things.”

She nodded, once, and the slight stiffness eased. “I am relieved you were not badly hurt, and are feeling better. Of course, you have other matters that need your attention.”

”A major project at the day job, Christmas crafts with my grandchildren (that was Saturday gone), a new book with a deadline for final loading of tomorrow and last minute changes to the cover and the interior. Yes, you could say that.” I offered a palm branch. “You will be pleased with the book, I think, Eleanor.  It is about a granddaughter of yours and her suitor.”

”Truly? The name on the invitation for yesterday was Sarah Grenford. One of my descendants, I thought, perhaps.”

”Next week, Eleanor, I promise. God Help Ye, Merry Gentleman will be published over the weekend, and Sally and David will visit you on Christmas Day.”

“That will be very pleasant,” her Grace agreed.

”I am on holiday from Friday, and during my three weeks off I plan to set up the schedule for next year and send out invitations for other authors to send their characters to visit you.” I sipped my tea, appreciating the fine bouquet, though I usually drink decaffeinated in the night. Not something I could expect Eleanor to know about.

She favoured me with her warm smile. ”Thank you, dear. I know my social calendar is only one of your jobs, but I do so enjoy my Monday afternoons.”

“I do, too, Eleanor,” I assured her.

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Sunday Spotlight on box sets

Lots of quality reading at a bargain price

Do you like box sets? I do. They’re usually a great value way to acquire a lot of reading. Tell me what you like about them, and what you don’t. I’m planning to be in at least five, and possibly seven, in 2018, so it would be a great help to know what to avoid.

Box sets of the first few books in a series are wonderful. I’ve bought them both to go back to earlier books I’ve missed when I come across a new-to-me author in book 4 or 5 of a series, and also when I’ve followed the series from the beginning through my library, and yearn to own it. The Mary Jo Putney Lost Lords set was one such book. I also have the Lucinda Brant Alec Halsey Mysteries, books 1 to 3. Among others.

I’m less inclined to purchase multi-author box sets of novels, unless the authors are mostly writing heroines of mine. It’s the librarian training I had as an adolescent. I want to shelve all the books by a particular author together.  (And yes, I can do that with electronic books; shelve them in several places all at the same time. But what can I say? I have my obsessive moments.) Still, I have a few, because what can you do but grab a bargain when you see one?

On the other hand, multi-author box sets of novellas are catnip to me. I’ve discovered many new favourite authors that way. Particularly at this time of year, when holiday box sets abound. I love seeing how authors combine the magic of Christmas and the magic of romance.

I have just read Christmas in Duke Street, every story of which is a gem. Waiting in my TBR unread books collection on Kindle, I have 7 Rogues for Christmas, The Dukes of Vauxhall, How to Find a Duke in Ten Days, Romance on the High Seas, Lords of Love, A Regency Collection, An Encounter at Hyde Park, Historical Hellions and more. Joy!

I have, as you know, published my own Christmas box set this year: all my holiday romances between one set of covers. If Mistletoe Could Tell Tales is available now, so if you don’t have my four holiday novellas, grab it and the two bonus novelettes.

I’ve also co-written a holiday story in the world of Sally and Toad, from Never Kiss a Toad. God Help Ye, Merry Gentleman is a prequel short story to Never Kiss a Toad, and also has a number of other shorts and excerpts from the world of Sally, Toad, their families, and their friends. It it is up for presale on Amazon, and will be published on 23rd December. (At the moment, it is free to my Wattpad and newsletter subscribers, who have a link to the unproofed version on a password protected page on my website, but I plan to take that down later this week. And put up a page for the presale links on my book tab.)

And, of course, I have novellas in three multi-author box sets: Never Too Late, with the Bluestocking Belles; Rejoice and Resist, with the Speakeasy Scribes; and Christmas Babies on Main Street, with the Authors of Main Street.

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Sunday spotlight on the past three years

The two on the far right are from a previous career. The rest have been published in the past three years. The collections bulk it out, with stories by other writers. On the other hand, I don’t yet have print copies of two of the anthologies I was in this holiday season.

As I race toward the release of my third story collection (If Mistletoe Could Tell Tales), I’ve been thinking about my brief (so far) career as an independently published historical romance writer.

My first post on my blog was three years and three months ago, on 16 September 2014. ‘Tentative first steps’, I called it. At that point, I was still writing Farewell to Kindness, my first novel. Candle and Min Avery had not yet wandered into the Assembly at Chipping Nidwick, and I had no idea that a month later I’d be consumed by their story, that two months’ later I’d be writing it, and that three months’ later the novella Candle’s Christmas Chair would be my first published historical romance.

Things have not turned out the way I planned at the beginning. Based on those two books, I figured I could manage three novels a year, while working full-time in the day job. I didn’t allow for the sheer volume of work required of an indie publisher and all the marketing needed in the bazillion-book marketplace. I didn’t factor in the changing needs of family, or the ill health that was about to dog my PEH (personal romantic hero) and I.

In the event, I’ve managed to write and publish four novels in three years, and I’m nearing the end of the fifth. I’ve also written and published eight novellas and a dozen or so novelettes or longish short stories.

And I’ve blogged. I’m a bit more structured today than I was in the beginning, with four regular weekly features. But they cover the same ground.

I’ve also talked about the writing process, about my books, and occasionally about the philosophy that underpins the kind of stories I chose to write.

I’ve written to you, and you’ve written back to me, in the comments and in emails. I’m grateful to have you with me on this journey.

So what is in store for 2018? Better health, I hope. I have committed to a book for Scarsdale publishing and four (count them, four!) anthologies. The Realm of Silence will be completed before Christmas and in editing in January. I’d love to think I could finish the next in the series, Unkept Promises, as well as Concealed in Shadow, the sequel to Revealed in Mist. So many plots. So little time.

As I said in my very first post way back in 2014: watch this space!