Caught in the Crossfire! Clockwork Enterprises book 3 is here!

It's been a long time coming and I am so excited to finally announce the release of The Girl and the Clockwork Crossfire, the third book in the Clockwork Enterprises trilogy. Thanks to all the fans who patiently waited for this book and to the friends and family who encouraged me through some hard times along the way. You are all amazing.

If you'd like to pick up a signed copy, I'll be vending at Airship Pirates: Port Townsend Steam 2017, June 9th through the 11th. This is a fantastic steampunk event put on by The Brass Screw Confederacy in Port Townsend, WA. I'll also be doing a reading on Saturday at 1:30. For more information, visit one of the links above or my events page. 

Here is the fantastic cover art by Mark Reid and you can read the first chapter here.

Maeko only wants to protect the people she cares about. Somehow, that goal has taken her from living a life as a pickpocket on the streets of London trying to pay off her mum’s debt, to becoming deeply enmeshed in rising hostilities between the Pirates and the Literati.

Now she has offers from both sides to help protect her loved ones. But things have gotten more dangerous. All around her the Pirates and Lits are hard at work on ways to destroy each other. Meanwhile, things are spiraling out of control with Chaff and Ash.

With Macak as her one constant companion, Maeko is going to have to decide for herself who she will trust. She needs to be at her most clever to survive this and she’s going to need someone’s help to keep from getting caught in the crossfire.

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Clockwork Cat, New Beginnings, and Moving Forward

Today, I am happy to announce the re-release of The Girl and the Clockwork Cat, Clockwork Enterprises book one, in print and eBook editions. After much consideration, I decided to part ways with the original publisher, so now, with some errors corrected, it is back out and ready for the world.

But where is Clockwork Enterprises book three?

This has been a year of many changes for me. It started early in the year with the end of my marriage. I believe, based on the ways we both have changed, that this will be better for both of us in the long run. Believing that didn't make it easy to walk away from the life I had known for so many years. I moved into my own place and got a new day job while trying to keep up with writing and promoting my books. I have been rebuilding my life and that has taken the majority of my focus this year.

In the midst of all this change, I have managed to release Apostate, the final book in the Forbidden Things series, and The Keeper, the first book in The Endless Chronicles, as well as the audiobook edition of The Girl and the Clockwork Cat with the audiobook for book two in that series coming out soon. I also got the rights back for The Girl and the Clockwork Cat print and eBook editions that I released today.

One of the unfortunate victims of all of this is the third book in the Clockwork Enterprises series, which I had planned to release in September 2016. I am happy to say that it is progressing and I do hope to have it out by early next year at the latest. I apologize to any of the fans who have been waiting on this release. I will get it out soon, but will take the time necessary to make sure it is worthy of the time you put into reading it. Please bear with me.

When I look back at all I have accomplished over the year and all the incredibly hard things I have made it through, one thing stands out above all else. I didn't do it alone. I had an amazing group of people who stood by me, even when I was at my lowest and probably not that fun to be around, and helped me move forward. So, for everyone who, like me, has found it hard to get out of bed, hard to smile, hard to breathe, remember, this is when we need each other most. This is when we need to reach out to each other and come together. We are not alone and that is our power.

Happy reading!

The Start of Something New: Exile Blog Tour and Giveaway

dogshaming.jpg

In a lot of ways, 2015 was a hard year for me. There were some health scares with people close to me. I spent a large part of the year dealing with prolonged injury recovery for my horse and adjusting to live in the city after 14 years living in the country. I have also spent the last several months handling my own injury recovery thanks to my dog, Teagan (I love him, really I do) feeling it necessary to leave his bone on the top step in the middle of the night.

On the up side, I started 2015 with the lofty goal of getting another book published. I ended the year with three more books released into the wild. Dissident (Forbidden Things #1), The Girl and the Clockwork Conspiracy (Clockwork Enterprises #2), and Exile (Forbidden Things #2) have all joined my debut novel, The Girl and the Clockwork Cat, out in the world. In 2016, I'm planning the released of the next two books in both series along with the introduction of something new that I'm very excited about.

To kick off the new year, I'm taking Exile on a virtual tour coordinated by Masquerade Book Tours. The stops are listed below. Join me and get involved for the glorious fun of it and for chance to win one of two $25 Amazon/Barnes & Noble gift cards.

May your 2016 be amazing (and full of books)!

Exile Tour Schedule

January 4th
Natural Bri @ Masquerade Crew (Review)
Charline's Blog and More... (Guest Post)
Hope. Dreams. Life... Love (Pick a Playlist)

January 5th
Foofy * Not Foofy (Review)
Boom Baby Reviews (Author Interview)
Teatime and Books (Spotlight)

January 6th
The Plotting Field (Review)
Girl of 1000 Wonders (Spotlight)
The Book Bag (Spotlight)

January 7th
DJ's Book Corner (Guest Post)
Celticlady's Reviews (Spotlight)
Paranormaly Yours (Author Interview)

January 8th
Moonwalker @ Masquerade Crew (Review)
Ogitchida Kwe's Book Blog (Pick a Playlist)
Indy Book Fairy (Spotlight)

Exile Release and Other Happy News!

As I was sitting down to write this blog post, I got a bit of happy news. My young adult novel, The Girl and the Clockwork Cat (the first book in the Clockwork Enterprises series), made the finalist list for the Dante Rossetti Awards. They're still judging for First in Category and Grand Prize. Congratulations to all the other finalists.

Ganbatte Clockwork Cat!

Now to the announcement of the official release of Exile, the second book in the Forbidden Things series. For links to order and a look at the first chapter, visit the Exile book page. Stay tuned for the blog tour January 4th through 8th, hosted by Masquerade Book Tours.

Yiloch, the newly crowned Emperor of Lyra, stands accused of arranging the assassination of the Caithin royal family. Torn between love for Yiloch and her close ties with the royal family, Indigo wants nothing more than to prove the accusation false, but the evidence puts the blood of the family on his hands.

Trying to protect the Lyran prince from the swift descent of Caithin justice, Indigo exposes the workings of an enemy who is willing to kill to protect his secrets. In desperation, she unleashes magic that sends Yiloch deep into the desert of Kudan before fleeing for her life. She must find him again to save his life as well as her own.

Betrayed by ally and by love, stranded by uncontrollable magic, Yiloch struggles to make his way back to the Lyran capital before Caithin can declare war, but standing between him and his empire is a lethal new enemy, wielding magic unlike anything his people have faced before.

Happy Holidays!!!

Clockwork Enterprises Book Two: The Girl and the Clockwork Conspiracy Grossly Under-hyped Cover Reveal

With all the craziness around getting The Girl and the Clockwork Conspiracy (book two in the Clockwork Enterprises series) ready for publication before Steamposium, there hasn't been time to set up fancy cover reveals and such, so I'm doing a little under-advertised cover reveal of my own for you here today. If the rest goes according to plan, the book will be available in print and ebook on September 14th. I will be signing copies of the first two Clockwork Enterprises books and doing a reading from both at Steamposium, September 25th through the 27th at Seattle’s waterfront Bell Harbor International conference center. Come join me if you're in the Seattle area. Copies of Forbidden Things: Dissident will also be available for purchase.

Once again, I must give thanks to my excellent cover artist Raquel Neira, and also to Michael McCormack for his photography, Ann Forseth of Romany Rapture for the lovely jacket on the model, and my cat Neko for his fantastic modelling work.

Feel free to comment below and let me know what you think!

Happy reading!

Selfies: The Process of Self-publishing

With the first book in the Forbidden Things series coming out soon (July 9th! So excited!), I thought it might be worthwhile to talk a bit about the adventure of self-publishing. This isn’t going to be about writing the book or about editing it. Rest assured, it has been edited extensively by myself and others and was accepted by my agent just like The Girl and the Clockwork Cat. I’d like to think the book is the best it can be, but I’m sure something was missed. I’ve yet to read a book edited professionally or otherwise where something wasn’t missed. I just hope it was a small something.

Moving on. This series is epic fantasy and epic fantasy is a hard sell to publishers these days. Since I’d given traditional publishing a try, I decided, with the approval of my agent, to try self-publishing the series. This post is to give readers a little bit of insight into what it takes to self-publish a finished book and to offer other writers starting that journey some assistance. I will probably forget some things, but I’ll try to cover all the major items.

Select a publishing format

The first decision I had to make was that of format because it has considerable impact on many other decisions. I don’t think any author publishing in today’s market would chose to do print without eBook, but eBook without print isn’t uncommon. I love the feel, smell, and weight of a print book. I also love the ability to do public signings at events. For me, having my book available through print on demand as well as eBook was an obvious choice, but it does increase the cost of the process in several ways.

To ISBN or not to ISBN

Many publishing platforms (Kindle, Nook, iBooks, etc. – I haven’t researched this for all of them, so you may want to double-check if you’re publishing a book) will provide an ISBN for free. I think this is a fine way to go for eBooks. However, if you’re doing print on demand through, for example, CreateSpace, and you use their free ISBN, they will be listed as the publisher for your book. You can decide if this matters to you or not, but I wanted my books to be published by me, so I purchased my own ISBNs from Bowker. It’s more expensive than it should be, but it was worth it to me. As a side note, for print books you can get a barcode for the cover on Bowker as well.

Copy-editing

This could be set aside as part of the editing process, but I did want to mention it as I feel having a dedicated copy-editor go over the final draft is necessary. I’m somewhat embarrassed by how many misused or simply missed apostrophes my copy-editor found (thanks Brian). I tend to ignore them a bit when I’m writing. A bad habit I’m trying to fix.

The search for great cover art

Cover art can get expensive, but having a good cover is critical. If you don’t know anyone with the necessary skills, there are many resources including online forums (Writers' Cafe, Goodreads, etc.) and art sites (such as DeviantArt, where I found Raquel Neira, the cover artist for The Girl and the Clockwork Cat and Dissident, and Fiverr, where I found Victoria Davies, the cover artist for In Silence Waiting and Making Monsters as well as several other shorts I haven’t published yet) that can help you find what you’re looking for. You need people to look at your book cover, usually in thumbnail form (thank you Raquel for pointing out that my original idea would be too busy for a thumbnail), and know if it’s something they’ll be interested in. A good cover also shows that you cared enough about your work to represent it well. If you are doing eBook and print, you will need a cover that works for both.

Interior design and formatting

Often overlooked, but critical for reader enjoyment and another place where doing both eBook and print can lead to more work and expense. Good interior design and formatting will determine how easy the book is to read and how people will feel while reading it. It’s easier to get more elaborate with print, but both versions should be attractive and easy to read. I strongly recommend reading through a print proof and looking over the eBook in all platforms you intend to publish on if possible. For one thing, reading through the print version, I found a few embarrassing content errors that were missed in all of the editing.

Getting the word out

There are a lot of ways to market online and a lot of people happy to tell you how to do it. After considerable research, I selected Goddess Fish Promotions to help with my cover reveal and with the post-release blog tour. So far, I’ve been very happy with my choice. If you plan on paying someone to do your promotion, research the options and find someplace that fits your specific book and your budget. Otherwise, you can try to go it alone. I didn’t take that route because, right now, I have more budget than I do time to write and edit.

 

So many platforms

There are a lot of platforms out there. If you want to make it simple, you can go with KDP Select and call it good. There are a lot of authors who say that has worked well for them. There are also a lot of authors who say diversifying has worked well for them. For my purposes, I decided to go with Createspace for the print on demand version. For the eBook, I’m going direct through Kindle and Nook then using Draft2Digital for some additional distribution. I may narrow or expand this as time goes on. Do your research and make the decision that is right for you and your book(s).

Those are the major items. I don’t doubt that I’m forgetting some things, so I may revisit this in the future. If you have questions or additions, feel free to comment.

Happy reading and/or writing!



Forbidden Things Book One: Dissident Cover Reveal

UPDATE: Congratulations Jo C. for winning the giveaway. Stay tuned for more giveaway fun in the book release blog tour July 13th through August 7th.

I am very excited to be doing a cover reveal for Dissident, the first book in my Forbidden Things series. After experiencing the ups and downs of traditional publishing with The Girl and the Clockwork Cat (the sequel to which is coming out in September) I decided to try out self-publishing with the Forbidden Things series. It’s been better in many ways, including not having to wait on publisher schedules, and harder in many ways (more on all this in a later post). All that work is now paying off with a book I am very proud to publish. Official release is July 9th. Visit the Dissident page for information on ebook pre-orders (print and additional distribution will be available on release).

Before I do my own reveal, I want to encourage you to visit some of the fantastic blogs involved in the cover reveal. The more visits the better!

1: RhiReading
2: Nephy's World
3: The Blog of C.R. Moss
4: BooksChatter
5: Romance Novel Giveaways
6: Unabridged Andra's
7: Mixed Book Bag
8: Cia's Stories
9: The Crafty Cauldron
10: Dina Rae's Write Stuff
11: A Book Addict's Delight
12: T's Stuff
13: CBY Book Club
14: Independent Authors
15: Room With Books
16: Tina Donahue
17: Vala Kaye's "Other World"
18: Harlie's Books
19: Blog of author Jacey Holbrand
20: GothicMoms
21: The Avid Reader
22: StarAngels Reviews
23: Author Amanda KimberleyLB My Writing, My Life
24: Books and Other Spells
25: Queen of All She Reads
26: Fantasy Author Nicolette Andrews
27: Natural Bri - Pursuits of Life
28: Musings of the Book-a-holic Fairies, inc.
29: Romorror Fan Girl
30: Welcome to My World of Dreams
31: It's Raining Books
32: Straight from the Library
33: Long and Short Reviews
34: Books Are Love
35: Tory Richards
36: Tamaria Soana
37: Jodie Pierce's Ink Slinger's blog
38: Harps Romance Book Review
39: Writer Wonderland
40: EM Lynley's Love Shack

I was fortunate to get to work with Raquel Neira, the cover artist for The Girl and the Clockwork Cat, on this cover. Without further ado, I present the results of those efforts.

Dissident-cover.jpg

Feel free to comment below and let me know what you think!

Happy reading!

Breaking the Silence & Book News

It’s been quiet here since early February (cue crickets). February itself was simply lost time due to a bad bout of flu that turned into pneumonia and put me in the ER a few times. Three actually, but I'm better now.

Now I’m making up for lost time with several book projects, two of which I’d like to share with you now.

More Clockwork Cat!

The sequel to The Girl and the Clockwork Cat should be coming out this year if all goes according to plan. Due to the red tape of traditional publishing, I don’t have a release date yet, but I promise to share as soon as I have something solid to offer (including an official title).

Something New!

Having experienced the world of traditional publishing with all its ups and downs and learned a great deal in the process, I am now exploring the world of self-publishing with my Forbidden Things fantasy series.

Taking this project on has sucked up massive quantities of time. Even with all the things I learned working with a publisher, the learning curve for self-publishing is steep. There are many things that I was aware of and even had a hand in with my publisher that I am now managing myself. Quality writing and editing are critical, but there are so many other things necessary to make a book that will draw people in and keep them coming back for more. You need great copyediting, cover art, interior design and formatting, promotion, and much more. You even have to get your own ISBN and bar codes! Every time I accomplished something, there was something new I hadn’t thought of yet waiting around the corner.

I’m happy to say that I am finally far enough in the process to announce that Forbidden Things book one: Dissident will be coming out in early July. Watch for a cover reveal in June. I am now deep into edits on books two and three and hope that taking these on myself will allow me to keep a more aggressive publishing schedule.

more books
more books

In other news:

We saw Mad Max: Fury Road the other day. As long as you aren’t offended by violence, I strongly recommend this move. If nothing else, it is worth seeing for the amazing visuals and the creepy way it sucked me in so I didn’t know how ice cold my toes were until it ended. It’s a non-stop action extravaganza with almost no dialogue that somehow fits in some compelling emotional moments.

Now to finish some promotional work on Forbidden Things book one before I succumb to the temptation of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt again.

Happy reading, writing, watching, playing or whatever tickles your fancy!