Anti-Climactic?

Yesterday I thought about starting to set up some blog spots to promote my upcoming release, The Vampire and the Vixen. It makes its world-wide debut on October 16. A new release is always exciting, but the trouble with this one is it's been out on Kindle since June and even had its run of five freebie days a couple of weeks ago, where it made it into the top 25 of Contemporary Romance freebies and almost into the top 50 overall. I can't wait to see how many copies were actually downloaded during that time. It also garnered a whole bunch of new reviews, all of them quite complimentary.


To be setting up a blog tour to promote its release, seems kind of 'been there done that'. I think if it were a paperback book, having a 'second' release would be more exciting. But it's a short novella, so it's only available in e-format. True, it will be around in a lot more markets (TWRP, Nook, etc) in addition to Kindle, but Amazon really seems to be the biggie.

So, I have to figure out how to make it fresh and new, not only for me, but for my readers as well. I think my focus will need to be on promoting it as a Halloween story.

I'm sure something will come to me, right?

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com

FREE on Kindle This Week

Although technically a novella for the Halloween season, I was thrilled to learn The Vampire and the Vixen would be released early on Kindle in order to participate in the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) program at Amazon. I'm even more thrilled to announce The Vampire and the Vixen, a tongue-in-cheek is-he-or-isn't-he vampire story, will be FREE on Kindle from August 20 to August 24.

Kelsey Adams is determined to get ahead without the influence of a famous father or by getting special favors from her boss. So it was a big mistake to kiss Rafe Alexander on the balcony at a library fundraiser.

Rafe is mysterious, charming, and sexy. And he's Kelsey's new boss. He wants people to accept him for what he is. Which could be difficult because Kelsey has more than a sneaking suspicion he's a vampire.

Can she look beyond that and trust him with her heart to have the future she wants? And will he still be there when the sun comes up?

Click HERE to download your FREE copy this week starting on Tuesday.

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com

P.S. Please feel free to repost, share, or tweet about this post. In fact, it would be greatly appreciated!

Summer Journal 2013 - Entry #5

The week before last I got the pre-Galley file on This Feels Like Home from my editor. TWRP goes on summer shut down for the July Fourth week, so she said there was no rush in getting it back to her. However, I figured last week was a good a week as any to tackle the read-through, so I did. I approached it with my 'read-it-from-the-back-forward' strategy, which works well to keep me out of the story and really focused on mistakes.

At this point, we're not looking for any major story changes, just minor edits in word usage, spelling, grammar, formatting, etc. Even though the mss has been gone over several times by both of us, I still managed to find lots of corrections.

Most of them were indeed formatting errors. A couple pages had a blank line in the middle. There were several places where italics were needed and weren't showing up. I found one miss-spelling on the brag page and one usage/spelling error: 'where' instead of 'were'. The first chapter ends with only one word on the final page, which is not only a waste of printing space, but kind of makes it really awkward to get the full impact of the hook, so I'm hoping we can find a way to combine a couple of paragraphs in the first chapter just to get that one word attached to the rest of the chapter. And then there were just a few inconsistencies when using the word 'national' to refer to Jake's rodeo dreams. Sometimes the word was used with a capital 'N' and sometimes a lowercase 'n'. So we need to decide which way we want to go. I also want to remove a set of lines from the teaser excerpt at the beginning of the book.

Nothing hugely major or complicated, but enough that when I typed out the list of errors/corrections, it filled a page and a half. But this is the time to catch all those sorts of things. It's highly annoying when I'm reading one of my own books and find errors...but it happens!

In addition to editing, I also made more headway on my WIP. I'm up to a little over 12,000 on "One Great Night" and plan on working on at least one major scene today. (The idea has been spinning in my head all night.) At this point, I'm thinking the story will be about a 20,000 word novella, so I'm a bit more than halfway done. That said, I never know what direction my characters are going to take me sometimes, so it may turn out to be a bit longer. Only time will tell.

I still haven't dug into anything promotion-wise for The Vampire and the Vixen or This Feels Like Home, but I know what needs to be done, so it's just a matter of doing it...before all of my coupons for bookmarks and postcards expire!

All in all, I'm pretty satisfied with my week. And now I'm going to sign off and get to work on that scene!

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com

Summer Journal 2013 - Entry #4

I have to say, in a writerly way, it's been a fairly productive week here as we close out June.

I finally got around to updating my web-site. I've been needing to add review snippets from An Unexpected Blessing for ages now. It was also way past time move the covers and buy links for Blessing and A Christmas to Remember (you think?!) to the bookshelf page and make room for new covers. I added the cover, release date, blurb, an excerpt, and a link for The Vampire and the Vixen. And then I did something similar for This Feels Like Home, although I don't have a release date on that yet. Since the beginning, I've had my bio at the top of the home page on the site. I shifted that to its own page, so that when the site is opened, the first thing that pops up are the covers. I'm liking that much better. None of these are big changes, but enough to make things feel fresh and updated. Which is nice.

This week I found out that The Vampire and the Vixen will be offered free as part of the Kindle select program in August. Because of this, even though it's official release date with TWRP isn't until mid-October, it's already up and live at Amazon. Which is pretty cool. Those freebie days are really supposed to boost sales, so I'll be curious to see how that goes.

I also got the pre-galley files from my editor on Home. It is super exciting to be moving along on this project. Right now, the galleys are showing a copyright date of 2013, which means I might have two books out this year. How fun is that?

It also means I need to get my butt moving on another project so I have something for next year. And along those lines I am happy to report I did some actual writing this week! I wrote about 1,000 words on "One Great Night". (Basic premise: A twenty-something gal lacking confidence asks her brother's best friend to be her sex tutor. When I read the first chapter at a critique session earlier this year, it was met with much enthusiasm!) I know in the grand scheme of things that doesn't sound like much, but the fact that I got out my laptop and sat down and made progress of any kind was huge for me. It's the most new material I've written in probably almost a year. And I'm at that stage where ideas and thoughts on the story and circling my brain...so that's a very good thing.

Now that I have covers for both upcoming books, I need to get going on ordering promotional items, so that will be on the to-do list over the next couple of weeks.

So all in all, a successful week as a writer.

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com

A Cover!

The cover for The Vampire and the Vixen arrived in my in box on Friday! I have to say I love it and it's perfect for the story.



Although what was interesting was this time around, it came through as a preliminary cover pending my approval. In the past, covers from TWRP came through as final covers, with only changes for misspellings made. The way the e-mail was worded, it seems like I would have been able to make other suggestions as well, which would be considered, but not guaranteed to change. But, like I said, all in all, I am very pleased!

Now all we need is a release date and we'll really be rolling...

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com