The reference is to the upcoming release of my first Indie book on 11.1.19, It’s a Trust Thing.
Flying by the seat of my pants refers to the fact that I learned everything about getting the book up on Amazon by myself. I asked a few Indie friends some questions ( hat’s off to Clair Brett!) for clarity, but for the most part I watched all the KDP tutorials and then just played around a bunch on the program to get the manuscript uploadable to Amazon.
From where I’m sitting, when I look at the “preview” screen of the book, it looks good. Release day will tell the true tale, though. I’ve ordered it to deliver to my kindle on release day – and yes, I really did. What better way to see how every other kindle reader will view the pages than to be a, well, kindle reader!? So I’ll be able to see if there any any issues with the download, how it looks, is formatted, etc. Because it’s self-published, I can go into the program again and fix any bugs. That’s one good thing about indie publishing – you have complete control over the manuscript.
Until that date comes, though, I am sitting here, a nervous Nelly to the max – which is kinda funny since my heroine’s name is Nell. Hee Hee.
In the interim, I’m writing the next two books I owe to WRP and trying not to stress too much. I gotta tell you, though, it’s wicked hard not to.
Tomorrow I’m going to show you all the sample covers I made for the book before I settled on this one:
Honestly, what other book was I gonna put up here today?? Hee hee.
So, IT’S A TRUST THING releases, as you know, on 11.1.19. Nell Newbery had an idyllic childhood up until the age of 16, when her father was arrested, tried, and convicted of running a pyramid scheme for people who had invested with him. Life as she knew it changed forever the moment he was taken away in handcuffs from their apartment.
Nell has lived her life since then out of the pubic eye, despite the hordes of journalists and paparazzi who follow her, dying to get a sound bit or a compromising position photograph. She’s cut off all contact with her felonious father and hasn’t visited him once while he’s been incarcerated. But he’s been begging her to visit him of late. The 15th anniversary of the date he was imprisoned is looming and Nell thinks he wants to involve her in a plan to garner him early release. Since she won’t speak to him, her dad emails her. This little snippet is just one of the messages that Nell has been deleting as they arrive. I think her anger shines through in this scene.
That done, I finally checked my in-box. Much of my day-today operations were conducted electronically through email, direct message, and via my website. Some days, if I was busy with something, I’d have dozens of notifications to contend with before I knew it. Staying ahead of the mail was an important facet in keeping my day moving smoothly and my stomach unknotted.
As I opened the application and waited for the messages to load onto my screen, I sipped at the bottled water I’d gotten with lunch. A quick eye stroll down the list of waiting-to-be-read notices and the water suddenly choked at the back of my throat.
No. Just…no.
I checked the return web address, blinked, then checked it again.
It couldn’t be; it had been over a year since I’d heard anything.
One more check. Yup. It was. The return address was from a government-dot-org account.
My father had sent me an email.
Why?
Or more importantly, what did he want, because surely this wasn’t a hi, how are you doing, missive. My father wasn’t wired that way. Every email was usually a request to do something for him.
Speak in his favor at an upcoming parole hearing.
I didn’t.
Write a letter to the Governor asking for clemency or to have his sentence reduced.
I refused.
Get together with his lawyers to discuss how they could finagle him a new trial, claiming the government had railroaded him.
I never bothered to call them.
My father, I’d finally come to realize when I was in college, was a user. Out for himself and himself alone. He’d never asked once about my mother – his wife – when he emailed me. Not once in all these years. Since she’d fallen apart after his arrest and subsequent incarceration, he figured she wasn’t useful to him any longer.
The bastard.
The woman had stood by him, valiantly, bravely, believing in him until the verdict was handed down, and even after that. By virtue of their marriage, though, her reputation was ruined, a side effect of loving the man and sticking by him. All her friends had turned their backs on her. The philanthropic committees and boards she’d sat on removed her from their ranks. Even her family disowned her, blaming her for marrying a man who would bring ridicule and shame upon their good name.
Suffice it to say when they’d disowned her, it had filtered down to include me, the Devil’s spawn. The difference between my mother and I was I didn’t care that her family had rejected me because of who my father was. My mother did, though. She was devastated when everyone she loved turned on her. So much so, she’d disassociated from the world and wound up committed. It was grossly unfair. Her husband was the criminal, not her. The only crime she’d committed was in loving and trusting the man.
I hadn’t seen nor spoken to my father since the day he was escorted out of a federal courtroom to begin his sentence.
He’d gotten my email address from one of his lawyers. Thankfully, none of them had my private cell number and I didn’t have a personal landline so they couldn’t reach out to me. My calls at the office were screened by the receptionist I shared with Ella and Danny, and I avoided them whenever they called.
This missive now staring at me was the first time in over a year he’d made contact.
He knew the anniversary of his imprisonment was a time the media dredged the whole sordid affair up again, vomiting all the details to the public. For the tenth anniversary a cable news magazine had dedicated a one-hour program to it titled, When Greed Ruled the World. My father probably thought now was a good time to strike with another request for early release, or some other legal maneuver. Since his name was going to be publicly front and center again, why not try to garner some sympathy; some empathy for himself? I did a quick calculation and came up with his age: sixty-eight. He’d claim to be an old man, repentant in his ways.
What a crock.
Any measure of daughterly affection or familial obligation died when he’d tossed my mother aside.
She was the one who had my loyalty and love. For her, I’d go to bat and do anything to make her life easier.
My father? Yeah, not so much.
My finger hit the delete key.
Intrigued? I hope so. Remember, you can preorder it now, here; It’s a Trust Thing. Or, if you subscribe to KU, you can download it on 11.1.19.
Feel like you’ve been dropped into the Wizard of Oz? No worries – you haven’t. It’s just me being silly. Coming up with post titles is as hard as coming up with book titles.
But I digress…
The purpose of today’s blog is to tell you a bit about my upcoming first Indie release IT’S A TRUST THING.
First, this is the second book in the DotComGirls series, with book 1 being DIRTY DAMSELS,
where you met best friends Ella Jones and Nell Newbery.
Second, It’s a Trust Thing is Nell’s story. Here’s a quick look at the book blurb:
Nell Newbery has trust issues. It’s hard to trust when you’re the daughter of a fallen financial scion who bilked people out of billions. Nell’s done everything in her power to keep away from men who see her as their ticket to fortune and fame. All she wants to do is run her ultra-successful business, HELPFUL HUNKS, in peace.
But it wouldn’t hurt to find a guy who doesn’t know a thing about her father’s felonious past; one she can give her heart to and trust it won’t come back to her battered, bruised, and broken.
Is Charlie Churchill that guy? On the surface he seems perfect, all polished manners and quiet mirth. Nell’s convinced he knows nothing about her, other than she likes superhero movies and views junk food as a food group.
Can she trust him to be what he appears to be? Or is he just pretending?
For Nell, trust is everything in life…and in love.
Third, the book will release on 11/1/19 and is exclusively offered in Kindle and KU ( No print books this time!) Who knows, though. Maybe, if I want to take the next step and up my learning curve to print on demand, I will. For now, digital only.
If this tickles your fancy in the book reading department, please go ahead and pre-order it here: IATT
And if you really want to do a nervous nelly of an author a favor – and that would be ME!! – ADD it to your Goodreads page as TO READ. Here’s the link for the book on Goodreads: IATT
This Sunday, 9.29.19, I’ll be blogging a Sunday Snippet about Nell, so drop by for a sneak peek. Oh, and because marketing never ends, I have a pinterest page devoted to the book and characters as well: PINTEREST
This is by far my favorite blog post of the year!! Authors I wish more people knew about.
Yes, some of these names are my friends! What good is having a friend who writes great books if you don’t promote her work to others? Some names are of writers I’ve discovered ( who were already famous) but were new-to-me and who I absolutely adore. The publishing indusctry can be cut throat as can any industry, but since the romance industry is so heavily weighed on the FEMALE side of the genetic table, it behooves all of us who write romance to support and lift one another up. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, “if we don’t lift one another up, men are gonna walk all over us.” She’s not wrong.
So, in no real order, just how they jumped into my head, here’s a list of some of the writers I feel more people should read:
Lauren Layne. From the very first book of Lauren’s I picked up 3 years ago I was hooked. She’s one of my one-click authors and her writing style is so easy and wonderful to read, that I typically finish her books in a day.
Kari Lemor. Yes, Kari is a personal friend of mine, but from the first book I read of her Love on The Line series, I was a fan! She introduced me to Romantic Suspense Lite – and I’ve never looked back!
Donna Simonetta. Donna is a Wild Rose Press sistah, and her writing is filled with emotion, laughter, and humor! Her River’s Bend books are emotional and thought provoking, as is all her work.
Roni Loren. I discovered Roni on Netgalley when I requested one of her Ones Who Got Away books. I was hooked from the first page!
Catherine Bybee. Another Netgalley find for me with her First Wives Club books. I actually had the opportunity to take a class on social media from her at an RWA conference and she is as engaging, charming, and sharp-witted as her heroines are.
Katie O’Sullivan Again, I first met Katie as a WRP sistah, and was hooked from the very first time I read her words. Her Cape Cod Dating rules all feature people I want to be friends with in real life!!! Her writing style just jumps of the page! Engaging, witty, and emotional are just some of the words I can use to describe her work.
And that’s just SOME of the writers I wish more people knew about!!! Let’s see what the other bloggers in this hop think this week: L&SR
No, Hell hasn’t frozen over yet, although with all the climate change problems, that may become a reality sooner than expected.
But…
I’m joining the Indie ranks of publishing!
You may be wondering why I finally joined the bandwagon of Indie authors after resisting for so long. It’s a valid question, especially since I vowed I’d never go that route because the learning curve is more than my mind can fathom! Indie authors are amazing to me because there is so much they need to know and do to get a book into print. Plus, the money it requires to do so.
But….
When Limitless Publishing accepted DIRTY DAMSELS (DotComGirls book 1) for publication, I already had book two, Helpful Hunks, written. When I submitted it, the publisher decided not to contract any more books in the series for monetary reasons. I get that. Publishing is a business and publishers are grappling day to day to compete with the growing hoard of self-published books. Investing money when they don’t think they are going to see a return is just poor business sense.
But…
I already had the second book written and the third plotted. When Limitless informed me I could either publish the book on my own or take it to another publisher, I didn’t want to wait another year or so and countless emails, revisions, etc. going the traditional route would have needed. I wanted to get the book out a.s.a.p. The answer, really, was the only one that made sense to me: self-pub it.
So, a title change from Helpful Hunks to IT’S A TRUST THING, countless hours learning how to get it published, and lots of sweat, money, and sleepless nights, and here we are. The book will be released on 11.1.19 and the preorder link is live. The book will only be available in Kindle and KU, only. I simply didn’t have the brain power left to figure out the rest of the online venues (Heehee).
Any mistakes in the manuscript, be they spelling or tense, or anything else you can find, are strictly on me. This was an experiment from beginning to end just to see if I could do it.
Thanks for reading, thanks for reviewing, and the only thing I ask is that you be kind. Remember, to authors, their words are like their children. When you bash them, it truly is like bashing their kids.
But the premise is clear – there are so many great Holiday themed books out there to choose from, if you start reading now, you’ll make it through the holidays, probably with some books to spare!
Here are my 3 most current Holiday themed romances:
HOPE’S DREAM ( Deerbourne Inn #2)
*** this title is available in E-copy only and is 98 pages long.
What if everything you’ve ever dreamed about was given to you but you had to sacrifice your heart to obtain it?
Hope Kildaire gave up her dream of becoming a nurse practitioner when a car accident killed her father and left her mother an invalid. Working two jobs and caring for her mother leaves the twenty-seven-year-old with no time for fun or relationships. When a law firm representing her paternal grandparents sends her several letters, Hope ignores them. She despises the family who disowned her father and wants nothing to do with them.
Lawyer Tyler Coleman’s job is simply to obtain Hope’s signature on a legal document. Getting it is harder than planned, though, when an unexpected attraction blossoms between them. If Ty is honest with Hope about why he’s in Willow Springs, he’ll fulfill his assignment but may risk hurting her.
The opportunity to have everything she’s ever desired is at Hope’s fingertips. Will her dream come true at the expense of Tyler’s love?
Readers who like the following stories will like HOPE’S DREAM: Sweet romance, Small town romance, Independent woman, family, moving on, grief and loss, New England, Deerbourne Inn series, Contemporary romance
HOPE’S DREAM is the second book in the DEERBOURNE INN SERIES from WIld Rose Press
Can a kiss under the Christmas lights lead to a forever love?
With Christmas just a few weeks away, Gia San Valentino, the baby in her large, loud, and loving Italian family, yearns for a life and home of her own with a husband and bambini she can love and spoil. The single scene doesn’t interest her, and the men her well-meaning family introduce her to aren’t exactly the happily-ever-after kind.
Tim Santini believes he’s finally found the woman for him, but Gia will take some convincing she’s that girl. A misunderstanding has her thinking he’s something he’s not.
Can a kiss stolen under the Christmas lights persuade her to spend the rest of her life with him?
With Christmas season in full swing, baker Regina San Valentino is up to her elbows in cake batter and cookie dough. Between running her own business, filling her bursting holiday order book, and managing her crazy Italian family, she’s got no time to relax, no room for more custom cake orders, and no desire to find love. A failed marriage and a personal tragedy have convinced her she’s better off alone. Then a handsome stranger enters her bakery begging for help. Regina can’t find it in her heart to refuse him.
Connor Gilhooly is in a bind. He needs a specialty cake for an upcoming fundraiser and puts himself–and his company’s reputation–in Regina’s capable hands. What he doesn’t plan on is falling for a woman with heartbreak in her eyes or dealing with a wise-guy father and a disapproving family.
Can Regina lay her past to rest and trust the man who’s awoken her heart?
Readers who enjoy the following kinds of stories will love CHRISTMAS & CANNOLIS: big families, Holiday romance, RomCom, surviving loss, moving on, foodies, bakers, Christmas
I don’t usually share my personal struggles on this blog.
I really don’t. Talking about writing or my issues with writing isn’t what I mean. Yes, I do discuss those, but they are pretty innocuous topics.
I mean, I don’t usually go deep and write about the daily struggle I have with my weight, my eating disorder, and my body image.
But…first I want to share something with you that I saw the other day that just RESONATED with me sososos much. Please take a few minutes to watch this. If you’ve already seen it, watch it again because every single person on the planet needs to hear this.
SO.
I’ve been fat shamed my entire life – by others and by myself. I know, I know! You’re supposed to love yourself for who you are, not what you look like. The reasons behind my eating disorder are lifelong and involve things said to me while I was child by my biological father and my grandmother. When people who are supposed to support you tear you down instead as a child, well, let’s just say that baggage gets carried into adulthood. I’ve never been able to look in a mirror and tell myself “you’re enough the way you are, because I was never able to feel that way.”
That’s on me.
When my daughter got engaged on Christmas eve, my first emotion was elation. For her. My second was terror. For me. As mother of the bride, I’m going to be front and center at all events looking….not good. Not the way I want to. Not the way I should. To have two opposing emotions – happiness for her and sadness for me – at the same time sent me into an emotional spiral that ramped up my eating disorder. Just like James Corden says in his video, shaming someone leads to depression, decreased feelings of self worth, and ineffective coping mechanisms. For me, that means an increase in my bulimia.
There. I said it. I admitted it out loud. Well, in print, anyway. But you know what I mean.
The first step towards fixing a problem is to admit you have one. Just like with alcoholism and drug addiction, you first need to recognize, name and accept that you have an issue, before you can begin to heal, fix, and help yourself.
So here’s my admission. My name is Peggy and I’m a bulimic.
First step? Check.
The second step is to come up with a plan for dealing and/or changing the issue. Way easier said than done, for sure. But now that I’ve said out loud what my issue is, I can devise a plan to fix it.
First step in this is to stop binging and purging whenever my emotions get out of hand.
Again, easier said that done, but if I think it, speak it into the air, and tell it to myself often, I know I can combat the desire.
Maybe this is all a little TMI for you. Maybe it is for me, too, but I am determined at almost 60 years old to finally FINALLY squelch this behavior. If writing about the struggle will help me attain that goal, so be it.
My goal is to eradicate my eating disorder, lose the excess weight pulling my health down, and in so doing, be the best, healthiest Peggy I can be. If that means that ultimately I am a size 8 or a size 18, so be it.
Until the next time I feel the need to talk about this again! ~ Peg
Full disclosure here, kids: I rewrote this article three times before hitting publish. The first time was written from a place of emotion and anger. Not a good head space to write from. The second was a little better, but still sounded too mean girl to me. Third time’s a charm, right? I hope so.
***takes a breath.
Okay, here goes…
Two days ago, this article was circling around the internet, twitter and facebook. It concerns a debut author, the advances she received on her books, and her claim that no one told her the real meaning of the advance and the true workings of the publishing industry when it came to money, promised money of the future, and the possibility of no money in the future.
The author makes ( or tries to make) several points in the article, that had she known the true workings of the publishing business with regards to marketing, author and book promotion, and royalties, she would have done several things differently when she received her advances for her debut novel and the series that came after it. The series she was contracted for and for which she received an ADVANCE.
Let’s look a little closer at those words: Her ADVANCES on her DEBUT novel.
She got an advance – a large one – on her DEBUT NOVEL. She was an unknown author and by the grace of GOD ( and probably a really good Agent) she received a sizable advance against the sales of her books. And she spends the entire article restating that no one told her what an advance really was and that the large one she received on her first book was not promised on future books.
Girl, for real? ( this is the part I had to edit because I didn’t say girl the first time, but something not very nice.)
It’s literally called an ADVANCE against Book Royalties. Even someone who isn’t in the writing/publishing business can deduce from that description that the publisher is giving you money BASED On the projected sales of your book. I find it hard to believe the author didn’t understand what that term meant, and because she didn’t, but thought she’d be making oodles of money in the future, she made some not great financial decisions.
She does admit, that’s on her, so good for that. But then she states that she grew up poor, and never learned the concepts of saving or investing. Well, I’m sorry, but that doesn’t wash with me. I grew up in the PROJECTS. We weren’t even able to live paycheck-to-paycheck because my mother had so many jobs when I was a kid, continual paychecks were never a guarantee. I grew up before social reform and there was no welfare, SSI assistance, or even a free lunch program in my public schools. But you know what? Even though my mother was barely literate, never finished highschool and could barely do basic math, she KNEW that when we did have a little money from a job that lasted more than a month, we saved it. Since every day was a rainy day, we saved it for a catastrophe day.
No one taught her to do this; it was basic common financial sense, something that this author states NO ONE TAUGHT HER.
To quote the author, “Did anyone working with me — agency, publishing team — tell me that a staggering advance was not something I should depend on or get used to and that, in fact, it’s extraordinarily common in the publishing industry for untested debuts to be paid large sums they will never see again? No. Did anyone in the publishing house take me under their wing and explain to me how the company made decisions about future book deals? No. Did the publisher tap a more seasoned author on their list to mentor me, as many major corporations encourage within their companies? No. Did the MFA in Writing program I was part of in any way arm me with the knowledge to protect and advocate for myself in the publishing world? No.”
She then goes on to state (blame) that no one in her publishing realm told her about how to market her books and the publisher didn’t really market them for her. Again, if she truly had an agent, I wonder why the agent never helped her with this or steered her toward the knowledge of how to do it. You can see where this was going for her: her sales weren’t great and future advances were lower than that $100,000 advance she got for her first two books.
$100,000. That amount is mind boggling to me. Why do I not feel sorry for her? Because I really don’t.
I’m a traditionally published author of 15 + books and have never received an advance of any amount on ANY OF MY BOOKS. Not one. Any money I’ve made has been solely royalty based.
And you know what? I KNEW THAT going in. I knew that was the way traditional publishing worked. No one taught it to me. No one sat me down and gave me a blueprint for how to make money with my books. No one had to tell me I had to hustle and sell my soul so I could sell those books.
The article’s author makes the point because she ASSUMED she would be getting more and more money and higher advances for future books, she never thought to save the advance she received. Instead, she spent it. She spent it and racked up more debt, almost to the point that she was bankrupt.
While I find her NO ONE TOLD me defense suspect and, let’s face it, whiney, it’s not an uncommon phenomenon. Athletes who come from humble beginnings and go on to sign multimillion dollars playing contracts, tend to spend their new-gotten money like no tomorrow. If they get hurt, fired, or if their careers end because of injury, and all that income now stops, they have nothing to fall back on either because they didn’t save for the rainy day that was sure to occur.
And we’ve all heard the stories of people who’ve won Lotto or Powerball who wound up penniless and in debt because of bad investments or hungry spending.
So, from that perspective, the author’s point about not knowing how to manage her money is correct. What I really find issue with is the fact that she thought she was all that and a bag of chips and would continue to ring in the cash with her books. To quote the article:
“After that second advance came through, I stepped into my dream life: quit my day job to write full time, moved to New York City, bought fifteen-dollar cocktails, and learned with astonishing speed to not bother worrying about the prices when I ordered at a restaurant.”
She goes on to state, “I said yes to travel (often book research I wasn’t reimbursed for), said yes to concert tickets, to new shoes, to finally being able to buy people the kind of presents I felt they deserved. I gave large sums of money as donations to organizations I cared about, delighted to feel like I was making a real difference. Did I pay off my student loans? No, just a few large payments. Did I set money aside for retirement? No. My reasoning was that the next book I sold, I’d take care of all that. “
I’m being 100% truthful when I say if I won Powerball tomorrow, or, if by the Grace of God I was given a $100,000 advance, I would SAVE SAVE SAVE and not spend with abandon. And you know why? Because I WAS that poor kid who never knew if there was going to be food in the cabinet come the end of the week, or if a paycheck was going to cover more than the rent with little else left for food. Once you’ve been without, once you’ve experienced real hunger, you learn to never take any money you get for granted, and, like squirrels storing nuts for the winter ( and yes, that’s a miserable analogy, but you know what I mean) you always ALWAYS save.
That’s just my opinion for the two cents it’s worth.
And just FYI, when the article hit Twitter, the twitterverse went nuts with people jumping on the author about her complaining and whining. The author tweeted that she received nothing but supportive comments OFF TWITTER from authors who told her that they felt just the way she did and they thanked her for her honesty in bringing this “problem” to the forefront.
Again, just my opinion here, but the only problem I could identify in the article was the author’s hubris, arrogance, and conceit in assuming she was going to continue to make oddles of money in an industry in which only about 0.001% make any real, livable money.
I know many people are going to disagree with what I’ve written, and that’s fine. This is still America and we are all entitled to our opinions. Since this is MY Blog, this is MY opinion.
Until next time ~ an-always-dreaming-of-an-advance-Peg
So, this week’s prompt is a thoughtful one: WHAT IS MY SUPERPOWER?
Easier asked than answered.
I can tell you what it isn’t:
I can’t –
Fly, read minds, become invisible, breathe underwater, teleport.
I don’t –
have xray vision, bat-hearing, a dog’s sense of smell, inhuman strength, eidetic memory, or the ability to heal someone with a simple touch.
I’m not –
strong, agile, quick/fast, charming or compelling, brilliant, telepathic.
What I CAN do is simple and extremely valuable, though: I’m a human bullshit detector.
I can spot a lie coming from a liar’s mouth after one sentence.
With this superpower I’ve been able to spot con-men, cheats, narcissists, thieves, and psychopaths in a heartbeat.
I’ve known when children are lying to get out of being punished for naughty behavior and adults are lying to avoid censure for bad deeds.
I’ve known when someone is bullshitting me, flattering me for nefarious reasons, attempting to steal from me, and sucking up to me for their own ends.
It’s a gift more than a superpower, I think, and one I am sososos thankful for. It’s helped me remove myself from tricky situations and helped me shove people who were up to no good from my life. It’s saved me from being a lemming many times, too!
I flirted with being a lawyer or an FBI agent for about 5 minutes when I was in my 20s due to this talent. But I liked Nursing more.
Let’s see what some of the other authors in this challenge consider their superpower; L&SR
Peggy Jaeger, Author 