It’s been a long journey for this little novella, but at last, the end is nigh! I hope to complete the publishing process within the next week, and will let you know as soon as this one is available for download. In the meantime, to whet your appetites, here’s a little goodie for you. A cover reveal/teaser graphic all in one. Enjoy!
I have used what energy I’ve been able to muster (beyond the healing process from my surgery, which seems to be dragging out forever) to finish up Book 2 in my Riverbend series, and I’m happy to say, Finding Hunter is DONE. All that remains is to format for Kindle & upload–and to share the absolutely perfect cover my wonderful friend and graphics goddess, Nicki Forde, designed for it. My also-wonderful friend, Doug Little, of St. Johns River Eco Tours, turned his wildlife photography skills to subjects such as a journal, a teacup, and a Tiffany lamp, providing Nicki with beautiful images to choose from. And here you see the gorgeous result of their combined effort.
Those who have read Book 1, Swamp Ghosts, will know this book focuses on a character introduced therein as Gunn’s friend, Hunter Painter. The cover is a perfect blend of Hunter and the woman he adores, Willow Greene. I couldn’t be happier!
Please feel free to share this everywhere you can. With luck, the eBook will be published in the next two days or so, and the print version will follow soon after.
And below is the blurb for Amazon.
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Before, I never thought about taking a life. Not once.
Now, the thought fills my mind day and night, and
I wonder how I’ll hide that terrible need,
As an old car swings to the shoulder,
And stops.
~ Traveling Man ~
Hunter Painter’s darkest fears have shaped his offbeat personality since he was a child, crippling him in ways invisible to those unable to see past his quiet exterior. In a sleepy Florida town known for its eccentric inhabitants, he’s always been a mystery to most.
Only one person sees beyond Hunter’s quirky facade. Willow Greene, the new age herbalist who owns the local candle and potpourri shop, has secretly loved him since they were in high school. When, sixteen years later, she discovers Hunter has loved her just as long, Willow hopes her dreams are finally coming true.
Willow soon learns, however, that Hunter fears happiness at her side isn’t in the cards for him. With her natural optimism and courage, she almost convinces him he’s wrong—that they can really have that life together they both long for—but even Willow can’t stop what Hunter knows is coming.
One by one, his worst nightmares become reality, culminating in an unthinkable tragedy, which devastates everyone it touches. Willow’s battle begins in earnest as Hunter is plunged into a bleak, guilt-ridden despair, threatening to destroy not only their love, but Hunter, himself.
Finding Hunter is the story of a lost man’s desperate struggle to make his way home again, and one woman’s unshakeable faith in him and the power of their love.
*** PRE-ORDER SPECIAL, ONLY 99 CENTS ***
Taliesin Wick knows exactly what she wants to do with her life. Even when her house-flipping father puts their home in Austin on the market and moves the family to Pennsylvania, it’s nothing but a minor wrench in the cogs of her dreams. Then she meets Nate Thorne. From the moment she first spied Nate playing guitar on his front porch, Tali was drawn to him. The sorrow in his songs, the deep sadness in his beautiful eyes… she can feel Fate pulling her to him. Something haunts him. He never talks about the sins of his past, but she knows he doesn’t trust himself, especially not with her heart. Tali can’t imagine the sweet, loving boy she’s come to know being the awful monster he thinks he is, but what if he’s right? What if learning his secrets changes the way she feels about him? Tali doesn’t know if their whirlwind of bliss is just a summer fling, or something much more, but she does know falling in love with Nate is going to leave the kind of mark you can never erase. Currently available for pre-order:
Amazon US, Canada, UK, Germany, Australia, France, Spain, Japan, India, Mexico, Brazil, The Netherlands
Cover Designed By Starla *coming soon to these retailers
Today is an exciting day, as it brings me one step further on a path I’ve been traveling for what feels like a lifetime.
It seems like a lifetime ago that I embarked on the endeavor of publishing my first novel. The Goblin Market was a project I’d been working on for years, writing and rewriting it the entire time I was going to college, but never quite knowing what to do with it whenever I reached a point where it felt done. Then I met my husband, who at the time was podcasting his zombie novel ESCAPE. He convinced me to podcast The Goblin Market, and I set up a website, bought a cheap microphone and downloaded freeware recording software to embark on the rewarding, but complicated endeavor that is podcasting a novel. It felt like it took forever to record, edit and put episodes out into the world, but I did it and then I began the process of independently publishing the book itself. The podcast is no longer available, but there is now a professionally recorded audiobook, a paperback and an ebook version of The Goblin Market, which is still very exciting to me. The love of your first “real” novel never dies.
At the time I was very motivated. I knew right where the next story was going to go, and I’d even started writing it, but as things happen from time to time I lost momentum and my inspiration began to wane. Jack in the Green, the follow-up novel to The Goblin Market got put on the backburner so many times, I lost faith in the story itself and thought maybe I should shy away from the pleas for a continuation of the story and move on to other things. I couldn’t ignore the pleas anymore than I could ignore the story itself, and for years I poked at it, prodding and trying to breathe life back into it so I could move on with my life.
See, I’m one of those people that cannot abide unfinished business. I don’t like to break promises and I lose sleep over things that need to be taken care of. That’s not to say I haven’t had my fair share of good nights’ sleep over the last five years, but there have been times it’s really bothered me that I hadn’t been able to finish Jack in the Green yet. I wrote a lot of other things in the interim. Several other novels, tons of short stories and then I sat down one day and wrote Winterborn–a short novelette meant to bridge the gap between The Goblin Market and Jack in the Green. Maybe it would quiet the disturbance and get me back on track with the novel that needed to be written. For a while it did just that and diligently worked through the 65,000 words I’d already written on the manuscript that seriously didn’t seem to want to be written.
A character emerged during the reworking, an embittered young prince who needed further exploration, and several times over the last year I found myself tinkering with his story as he folded himself into Jack’s. I spent most of May working on Jack in the Green because that story finally decided it was time. And then near the end of the month I sat down and started writing a novella about that angry little princeling. With the story now finished and in edits and rewrites, it’s time to advance one step further Into the Green.
Coming July 10, 2015, pre-order details to follow shortly. In the meantime, if you’d like to begin your journey Into the Green, you can begin at The Goblin Market and follow it up with Winterborn before embarking ever further into the darkness that lurks between the Underground kingdoms with The Darkling Prince. If you’re already familiar with this world, you can learn more about the story itself over on my website in the Cover Reveal post there.
Fatally wounded in a harrowing battle against Enoch Lousse and the king’s Black Guard, Taven Grimmbane will die without a healer. Commander of the Argonel, Taven is the driving force behind the elven resistance. Without him, the last of the free elves will fall.
A healer’s hands restore life, even to those undeserving–that’s what Helti’s grandmother taught her. Taken captive by the Argonel and forced to heal their dying commander, a human healer holds the life of one of the most brutal killers of men in her hands, just as he holds hers.
Helti wishes she could hate him for the things he’s done to her people, but she embraced Taven’s soul when she brought him back from the veil between life and death, and she knows there is beauty yet within.
A single act of mercy could turn the tides of war. A healer’s compassion could touch the heart of a monster who doesn’t believe he deserves peace or redemption. If the sun could descend from his throne to give his heart to a human girl, surely an elf can find it in himself to love outside his race… even if only for a little while.
The Hands of War: Book One–Heart of the Sun will be available for pre-order on April 29.
Just a quick note to say, if anyone has the time – tomorrow (today? – not sure, what with time differences), Friday 10th, anyway, I’d like to invite you to drop in to the virtual facebook party I’m hosting for the release of my latest book – an anthology of science fiction and fantasy stories by my writer’s group and friends.
And yes, I have a story in there as well as acting as publisher.
We’ve dedicated the book to our founder, Peter T Garratt, who sadly passed away at the young age of 54, and is much missed.
He would have been very proud of this book.
I’m planning entertainment, chat, and a few competitions with small prizes, so even if you only have a few minutes, you’re welcome to just drop in.
8pm – 11pm British Summer Time, BST, (you can find a time converter here) and the party is on facebook here
Hope to see a few of you there 😀
Oh, and in addition, I’m offering FREE copies to anyone who would like to review…
My copy editor and beta readers tell me I write clean. Ha! What they don’t know is that I’m an obsessive editor who tends to go over every chapter with a fine-tooth comb approximately three (sometimes four or five) times before I let anyone else see what I’ve written.
The first editing pass is meant to clean up my far-too-quickly-written prose. I write the way I read — fast — which means that I leave out connecting words, explanatory sentences, and sometimes whole paragraphs. It’s all in my head — can’t you see it too? So, the first time I edit a chapter, the task takes nearly as long as it took to write the chapter in the first place, and I tend to add about 10 – 20% to the length in the process. (Yes, this makes me a putter-inner instead of a taker-outer). The result is pretty much like a normal writer’s first draft — still rough, but at least now the sentences flow and make sense.
For the last couple of novels, I’ve been editing the previous day’s chapter before starting to write the current day’s chapter, which works well since I’ve only 20% forgotten what I meant to say by that point. In a perfect world, I edit before/during/after breakfast, then walk the dog to figure out what I’m writing about next, and finally settle in for a relaxing morning of writing (my reward for pushing through the daily edit). But, with my current work in progress, I’ve been trying out a new method, where I edit the previous two days’ chapters before starting to write. This does result in cleaner work (and will hopefully mean that the agonizing first full edit will go more smoothly), but the technique has the unfortunate side effect of giving the dog time to go off and start hunting snakes before I get around to starting her walk.
Editing round three will come once the first draft is fully completed. This is where I read the whole book through at once, fixing big-picture problems and once again cleaning up the flow. Then, after getting corrections back from the copy editor, I read through one more time on KDP’s previewer window just in case there’s something my nearly-as-anal-as-me editor missed, and then I finally let the book go out into the world alone.
While I’m still on the fence about the write one, edit two method, I highly recommend write one, edit one. A writing book I read recently reminded me that editing is a learned skill just like writing and that we get better at it by practicing every day. Maybe in a few years, I’ll be fast enough to get all of my editing done before my dog gives up hope and starts rustling up her own breakfast?
(As a side note, how do you like the new cover for my upcoming novel, Pack Princess? I decided to outsource this one to a pro, and I love the result! But it can still be tweaked, so if you hate it, please let me know.)
Woohoo! I’m so excited to share the cover of my next book in the Wake-Robin Ridge series, A Boy Named Rabbit. As always, my cover GODDESS, Nicki Forde, has done exactly what I wanted with this one. All I had to do was say “waterfall” and “silhouette,” and she nailed it.
For those who aren’t familiar with Book 1 in this series, Wake-Robin Ridge, here’s a shot of that one, so you can see our intent with the series is to keep the same basic layout, and just change the middle image to something appropriate for each book. And thus, a bit of branding occurs. Hopefully. So what do you think? Do you like the new cover? Are we on the right track when you see the old one? (Oh, and for those who aren’t familiar with North Carolina wildflowers, a wake-robin is the red trillium on the cover, and the springtime bloom for which the ridge is named.)
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