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#Outlander @Twitter Party – Updates

Outlander Premier based on Diana Gabaldon's internationally bestselling novelsExciting Outlander News!

I'm REALLY excited to announce that Diana Gabaldon's assistant has contacted me to set up an interview for PNR Radio! SQUEEEEEEE!!!! With that being said, in my previous post I said I was going to giveaway the Outlander poster my husband and I were able to secure. HOWEVER, I've put in a request to see if I can send it to Ms. Gabaldon in hopes that she'll sign the poster and then forward it on to the winner!!! As busy as she and her assistant are, I'm sure it will take a little bit for them to get back to me, so I can't promise the poster giveaway for the weekend until I hear back from her. Cross your fingers we have a thumbs-up for this request. I'm sure you'd all rather have HER sign the poster instead of me! LOL And I don't blame you! ONE DAY my novels will be made into a TV show or movies and THEN I can sign movie posters! Mwahahaha! My ultimate plan for conquering the world!!! I don't know about you, but I'm all for HOT SCOTS dominating the world. *Arial swoons* What I hope to do is AS SOON AS I learn whether or not Ms. Gabaldon will be able to sign the poster is create a contest entry on the PNR Radio website, where we usually have all our other giveaways, which is at http://pnrradio.com/contest. The duration of the contest will be from the moment I know, through the week when we air her interview (TBD). I won't know what other giveaways Ms. Gabaldon will have during her interview, if any, so that contest entry point will be updated as I learn more. (And for those of you who might now know, I'm the host of PNR Radio, so be sure to subscribe for free for our weekly giveaways and interviews with your favorite authors and celebrities of Entertainment that Goes Bump in the Night! Listen now on iTunes or Stitcher!)

Event Time Update – 6pm PT/8pm CT/9pm ET

To make things a little more consistent across the board for the whole US, we'll be doing our Twitter party starting at 9pm ET. Since the show doesn't air on the West Coast until 9pm PT, I'm going to be watching it ON DEMAND right from the Starz Outlander official website. Didn't know you could do that?? YEP! You could even watch it TODAY, RIGHT NOW! Just go to http://www.starz.com/originals/outlander and click on the button that says, “Watch Episode”. So no matter where you are in the world, you can watch it at the same time we are and participate in the twitter about HOT SCOTS! Jamie…YUMMMM! We will still be having giveaways during the show this Saturday and will be taking entries until Sunday 5pm PT, so keep using #ScottishShifters to be included in the drawings. The more you use that hashtag in relations to our conversations and the event, the more chances you'll have to win! Bestselling authors will be giving away books, gift cards and merchandise related to our books, so you definitely want to BE ONLINE DURING OUR PARTY! Just login to Twitter during the show (times above) and watch for the hashtag. You can use TweetDeck or Hootsuite to set up a column for #ScottishShifters and see a live feed of the comments using that hashtag.

Midnight Hunt - Book 3 of the Bonded By Blood Vampire ChroniclesWhy Are We Doing This Party?

Earlier this year, a group of us authors decided to team up to share our love of Scottish Shifters by coordinating a boxed set. Then we heard about Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series being made into a television show AND airing this year around the same time we were launching our boxed set. We thought, “What a great way to celebrate our love of HOT SCOTS and magical stories than during the premier of the one book that started it all?” So during the show, ye'll get to learn about our new boxed set and chat wit' the bestselling authors that be participatin'. Ye dinna wanna miss this spectacular event, lads and lasses! (Okay…I'll stop.) My novel Midnight Hunt will be included in the set, so for those of you who haven't had the chance to pick up your copy, this is a GREAT opportunity as you'll also be getting over a dozen stories for 99 cents! If you have any questions about what's happening, just leave me a comment below. Happy Tweeting and good luck on the drawings!!! That's my two pence… Arial 😀

Immortality of Vampire Fiction vs. The Industry

frustratedWARNING: I'm venting a little here today.

The Nelson Literary Agency posted some advice/information in their newsletter about the difference between a “good” manuscript and a “salable” manuscript. You can write a great story, good grammar, character development is tight and storyline is solid. But if the editors don't want it, they won't buy it. I quote the following, but I'm going to put my own adaptation in brackets because I've been told the same thing about my manuscripts (both vampire and steampunk/dystopian):

“For example, dystopian [vampire] stories are hot right now in the young-adult [adult/erotic] genre. As a result, for the past twelve months, editors have been inundated by dystopian [vampire] projects. They are tired of them, even though these titles are still releasing and some are doing quite well. Readers are still enjoying dystopian [vampire] novels, but editors don't want to buy them anymore. So right now, no matter how well written your dystopian YA [vampire novel] might be or how cool the premise, if an agent is taking a look at it, she is probably thinking she can't sell it and will pass on offering representation. That's the bald truth. The timing just plain sucks, and as an agent, selling projects is all about perfect timing: landing the right project, on the right editor's desk, at exactly the right moment.” (my emphasis on the underline)

More than anything else, I think this is a prime example and reason as to why self-publishing is so successful. Yes, you get the crap out there…I totally understand that. But the Big Six (as the big publishers are known as) publish crap, too.

What frustrates me the most is the editors KNOW there is an audience for these books – such as in the aforementioned Dystopian YA and my genre of topic, vampires – and yet because they're tired of reading them, they don't want to see them anymore. This is a business, people! Not your time to have a leisurely read! Print what the readers want!

OMGOne agent told me the reason why editors won't even look at such manuscripts (e.g., vampire, dystopian, steampunk, etc.) is because they're tired of getting a bunch of crap manuscript with the same stories. My response – and I can say this because I'm an editor – OMG get over it! That's your job as an editor. READING MANUSCRIPTS. If you don't like reading crap manuscripts, get another freakin' job. The sad truth is there is a TON of crap out there; it comes with the territory.

I belong to a group called I Love Vampire Novels and they have been my biggest supporters of my self-published novels – my Bonded By Blood Vampire Chronicles. Their FB page boasts over 100,000 LIKES. And I'm sure there are a lot more vampire lovers out there than just 100,000. This group and others like them, J.R. Ward, Charlaine Harris, Laurell K. Hamilton and Sherrilyn Kenyon are all proof people love vampire stories and they sell well.

But the editors are tired of them. :\

No problem! We'll just self-publish and make 70% off our book sales and the Big Six can continue whining about how their industry is failing. Enjoy the trip down!

Thanks for letting me vent! If you made it this far, thanks for putting up with me! Do you feel just as passionate about this topic? Does it really matter to you? Do you have your own experience about the industry you'd like to share? How about from a reader's perspective? Am I completely whacked in my reasoning?

That's my two pence…

Arial 😉

 

What I’ve Learned About Twitter

Twitter Expert? Hardly!

I'm going to state right up front…I am no Twitter expert. I will say, however, having just recently come to finally understand the concept of how Twitter works AND how other people use Twitter, I'm able to grasp the concept of how it can help me communicate with readers. With that said, if anyone else has anything they can add or correct me on, please leave comments. We can all be better at using this amazing social networking venue if we all pitch in.

Since I'm a fiction author, I'll be sharing this information from the perspective of novels and that portion of the publishing industry, so this article is probably more geared toward the fiction author who wants to learn how to use Twitter to get the word out about their novels, but the concepts covered here can be applied to almost anything, so read on.


This article is long, but covers the following topics (click topic to go straight to it…use up arrow in bottom-right corner of screen to go back to top…BUT click the MORE button below if you're not in the actual article.):

Continue reading →

MIDNIGHT CONQUEST Romance Trading Cards are Available!!

Front

Back - Broderick

Back - Davina

OMG I'm so jazzed at how my Romance Trading Cards turned out! WOOT!!! To see a close-up, just click on the images.

For those of you who are not familiar with Romance Trading Cards…they are the latest craze in the Romance Novel industry. Readers are going nuts for them!! They're trading cards just like any other – people collect them, trade them, get them autographed and everything. For more information, I encourage you to visit the Romance Trading Card web site. Continue reading →

NEW Vampire Coaster Sets!

UPDATE: I now have pictures of the coasters. Click the picture to the left here for a larger version. And I've included some more pictures below to click on and see details.

OMG I am soooo excited to announce that my husband and I have created these really neat wooden coaster sets with vampire sayings on them. We've made them to celebrate my debut novel MIDNIGHT CONQUEST. We've created two sets: The Vampire Romance set and The Vampires Do It set. I have my comedy and tragedy masks in the design – they symbol of my Bonded By Blood Vampire Chronicles romance series. Each set is numbered and will have my debut novel information on the bottom of the holder. Here's a list of the sayings: Continue reading →

New Cover for MIDNIGHT CONQUEST

I realize the publisher will be the one to design the cover, but I'm a visual kinda gal and I like to SEE things happening! So, I've designed a new cover for my first book – MIDNIGHT CONQUEST. Why? Well, though I like what I did before, it doesn't fluconazole buy online uk LOOK like a paranormal romance. While at the RT convention, I saw the covers that immediately drew me to them because they LOOKED like a paranormal romance novel. So, I don't think there will be any mistaking this for anything BUT a paranormal romance… Continue reading →

MIDNIGHT CONQUEST Merchandise!!

vampire02smCan you believe it!?! You can now buy Midnight Conquest merchandise at our CafePress.com store…among a few other things! I'll have more items up in the store and with the way things are growing, we'll end up opening a separate CafePress.com store instead of just being a section in the Enchanted Woodz store. Check them out and express your vampy self!!

That's my two pence…

Arial 😉