I know it's not typical, nor is it recommended, but I have rewritten and re-released one of my books. Realizing I should have waited to publish it in the first place was difficult for me, as I don't like to admit to mistakes, but I've rearranged my publishing schedule to accommodate the fact that I had a free novella up that was not the best example of my work. So I rewrote it. I love the story now, and am proud to pimp it. The characters are developed, there's more of a mystery, and the MCs are more likeable, I think. Since some of my negative reviews were about "gratuitous sex scenes" I changed the classification to erotica, as I was unwilling to take out the sex, since it compelled the plot lines and was a major driving force for the characterizations.
Where before, it was a free novella, now it is a full-length novel. It is the first in the Stories of Serendipity series, and introduces a lot of the characters that have their own stories later in the series. That was a super fun scene to write, and gave me more insight into the characters that I have yet to write stories about, although their outlines are waiting patiently for me on my laptop.
Another thing I really enjoyed about writing this was revisiting old characters. Claire and Max were the impetus of my writing career. I have always been one to make up stories. I've always had a journal next to my bed. I've always been a writer. But Claire and Max were a story I'd been thinking about for nearly a year before I finally decided to sit down and write it. They'd been bungling around inside my head for ages it seemed, before I finally told my husband I wanted to try to write a book. His support was all the impetus I needed to make a go at it.
Initially, the novel sucked. I'm not gonna lie. But I loved the characters so much, I kept rewriting it. My marketing plan involved a free book to "hook" potential readers, so I cut it down after rewriting it a couple of times and decided to make a novella out of it. I was relatively pleased with the result, as in, it was better than anything else I'd written about Claire and Max so far. So I hit the publish button.
Reviews were mixed. Some people loved the story, others hated it, a lot thought it was okay. I'm alright with people hating my stuff. As long as they're not cruel in their reviews, I have no problem with people giving me one and two stars because it wasn't their cup of tea. But the reviews brought to my attention that there was so much I could have done with the story that I just hadn't done yet.
Hence my decision to rewrite it. While in KDP's details page, I updated the product description and decided to re-classify it as well. It is now in the erotica section of Amazon's search page. And now it's #29 in erotica. And #840 in free kindle books.
I'm pleased with that.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Skipping Stones Blog Tour
Blurb:
They say there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Not everyone will grieve in this order, nor will everyone go through every stage. It’s during the stage of denial when Alex Hart meets Andrew Foster. He takes her one-step closer to acceptance: the stage when new, meaningful relationships are formed. The stage when the realization occurs that this is now the new state of normal.
Just when Alex thinks she is on her way to healing, she enters the bargaining phase. That’s the phase where you wonder what you could have done differently. You wonder “what if?” Specifically, what if the ones you loved hadn’t left you?
Leaving…this is what makes heading off to war so difficult and frightening for Alex. She knows all too well what it’s like to be the one on the losing end of life, which is why she’s made it her personal mission in life to save as many lives as possible. The extreme high she gets from treating trauma victims turns into Alex’s own form of therapy, or so she thinks.
Not everyone will grieve in this order, nor will everyone go through every stage. It’s during the stage of denial when Alex Hart meets Andrew Foster. He takes her one-step closer to acceptance: the stage when new, meaningful relationships are formed. The stage when the realization occurs that this is now the new state of normal.
Just when Alex thinks she is on her way to healing, she enters the bargaining phase. That’s the phase where you wonder what you could have done differently. You wonder “what if?” Specifically, what if the ones you loved hadn’t left you?
Leaving…this is what makes heading off to war so difficult and frightening for Alex. She knows all too well what it’s like to be the one on the losing end of life, which is why she’s made it her personal mission in life to save as many lives as possible. The extreme high she gets from treating trauma victims turns into Alex’s own form of therapy, or so she thinks.
When faced with her world being turned upside down, Alex may just find that her true therapy is in the one who has always saved her.
Author Links
Bio:
In 2005, the couple welcomed their first son, Noah. J.B. finished her Bachelor of Arts degree in Early Childhood Education at the University of South Carolina-Aiken in 2006. During her time studying children's literature, a professor had encouraged her to become a writer.
In 2007, she welcomed their second child, Jonah, and she became a stay at home mom/entrepreneur. In 2009, the found out their two children and J.B. have Mitochondrial Disease. In 2011, a diagnosis also was given to Chad. Please take a moment and learn more about Mitochondrial Disease. Awareness is key to this disease that has no cure or treatments.
J.B. McGee and her family now reside in Buford, Georgia, to be closer to their children's medical team. After a passion for reading had been re-ignited, J.B. decided to finally give writing a shot. Broken (This Series), is her first book and first series.
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Friday, September 6, 2013
What does my writing have to do with celery?
My daughter and I were coming in from the grocery store today, and she was valiantly trying to help me in with the foodstuffs. I caught her dragging a package of celery and said something to the effect of, "You're dragging the celery through the dirt." She came back with the ever-witty reply of, "It's the celery's fault!"
Now, we all know it's not the celery's fault it was being dragged through the dirt on its way to my fridge, so I replied with the all-wise, "Own it, Elizabeth. Just get the celery out of the dirt!"
I have no idea what she did, as I was on my way back to the car for the 30-pack of beer, because it's Friday night, after all...
That one comment, coupled with this blog post, got me thinking...
Last Sunday, at church the president of our women's group introduced me to another member as "a published writer" where I blushed profusely and started staring at my fascinating shoes.
See a couple of months ago, during a moment of weakness, I announced to the entire group of 30 little old church ladies that my Smashwords check was more than I anticipated, and I was proud that my books were making a little money. All thirty silver-headed ladies pulled out pen and paper and started writing down my information. When I told them they couldn't buy actual copies of the books, more than half of them put away their paper, but they were all very curious about what kind of books I wrote.
I actually told them I write trashy romances. Yup. Those are the words I used.
Tonight I realized, nobody will take me seriously if I don't take myself seriously. Which means I need to lose the word "trashy" in my repertoire. I need to tell people, proudly that I am about to publish my sixth romance novel. My in person presence needs to match my online presence. I am a mother. I go to church. But I'm also an author. I author books. And I have published several. And people buy them. And LIKE them. So there! Yes, I'm aware I just began five sentences in a row with a conjunction (My apologies, Mrs. Garcia). It's a stylistic choice.
So, yeah...Elizabeth needs to own the fact that it was not the celery's fault she was dragging it through the dirt. And I need to own the fact that I write romance. When my daughter tells her friends' parents that her mother wrote a book called Hot Mess, and they look at me expectantly, I will not blush and stare at my feet saying, "Yeah, let's go, hon..." I will hold my head up high and say, "You can check it out at www.anneconley.com. Or join 1750 other people who like my facebook page.
HA!
Now, we all know it's not the celery's fault it was being dragged through the dirt on its way to my fridge, so I replied with the all-wise, "Own it, Elizabeth. Just get the celery out of the dirt!"
I have no idea what she did, as I was on my way back to the car for the 30-pack of beer, because it's Friday night, after all...
That one comment, coupled with this blog post, got me thinking...
Last Sunday, at church the president of our women's group introduced me to another member as "a published writer" where I blushed profusely and started staring at my fascinating shoes.
See a couple of months ago, during a moment of weakness, I announced to the entire group of 30 little old church ladies that my Smashwords check was more than I anticipated, and I was proud that my books were making a little money. All thirty silver-headed ladies pulled out pen and paper and started writing down my information. When I told them they couldn't buy actual copies of the books, more than half of them put away their paper, but they were all very curious about what kind of books I wrote.
I actually told them I write trashy romances. Yup. Those are the words I used.
Tonight I realized, nobody will take me seriously if I don't take myself seriously. Which means I need to lose the word "trashy" in my repertoire. I need to tell people, proudly that I am about to publish my sixth romance novel. My in person presence needs to match my online presence. I am a mother. I go to church. But I'm also an author. I author books. And I have published several. And people buy them. And LIKE them. So there! Yes, I'm aware I just began five sentences in a row with a conjunction (My apologies, Mrs. Garcia). It's a stylistic choice.
So, yeah...Elizabeth needs to own the fact that it was not the celery's fault she was dragging it through the dirt. And I need to own the fact that I write romance. When my daughter tells her friends' parents that her mother wrote a book called Hot Mess, and they look at me expectantly, I will not blush and stare at my feet saying, "Yeah, let's go, hon..." I will hold my head up high and say, "You can check it out at www.anneconley.com. Or join 1750 other people who like my facebook page.
HA!
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Teaser Tuesday
So, I've been working on a re-write of Neighborly Complications. It's my free novella, and apparently a novella just isn't enough. There's not enough backstory, not enough character development, not enough relationship building, not enough of anything.
Originally, this was my first full-length novel, and it was awful. I hated to waste the year or so that I spent on it, so I cut it to shreds and turned it into my novella to offer free as a marketing technique. Well, that's worked okay, except based on the comments and reviews I've gotten, it's not a very good representation of my work as a whole.
In my re-write, I'm adding in some of the character's backstories, but I'm not just pasting it in from the original, because the original sucked. I'm actually rewriting it. And changing a lot.
Originally, it had six ghosts. Claire moved into her ancestral home to live with the ghosts of her great-great grandfather, great-great grandmother, great-grandma, an aunt, uncle, and her grandpa.
Yeah, ridonkulous.
And there were love interests. Lots of them. And death. And dreams of ghosts. And dreams of dead wives. And lots of bad writing.
Hopefully, this re-write will be better. The story is nearly unrecognizable from the original, even though I have pulled a lot of the elements from the first story.
I've almost finished it, actually. I'm hoping to have it finished by the end of this week. That would make me very very happy.
Here's a teaser from it...
After working in her garden, Claire jumped in the shower, excited to have hot water. She luxuriated in it. The stream of hot water cascading down her head, running over her shoulders, down her body was absolute heaven. After spending all week jumping in to get wet, turning off the water, soaping up, and then jumping in to rinse off as quickly as possible in the freezing cold water, this was paradise. The mirror was actually fogging up. Awesome. She soaped herself up, washed her hair twice, and shaved. As she was sitting on the floor of the tub, cleaning out from under her toenails, while the conditioner sat for the required two minutes in her hair, she saw a shadow pass outside the shower curtain.
The blood in her veins turned to ice, despite the heat of the shower.
“Hello?” That was dumb. No psycho-killer in his right mind would answer that. Suddenly, Claire remembered Max’s warning about the guys that had delivered yesterday, and she realized she hadn’t locked the back door behind her when she came inside.
She peeked out the edge of the curtain to see that whoever had been in there was gone. Sighing a relieved sigh, Claire gingerly stepped out of the shower.
A soft giggle sounded from somewhere behind her, and Claire screamed. She looked at the mirror and saw a perfect circle drawn into the fog on the glass where there had only been fog moments before. She screamed again and ran out of the room.
Her goal was to get down the stairs and to the back door and out of the house before the psycho-killer could catch her. Never mind that naked women always got the axe first in all those horrible movies. She couldn’t stop screaming. It was like she was possessed and couldn’t clamp her mouth shut.
She stumbled down the stairs, coming to an abrupt halt when she saw Max coming up them, panic in his eyes.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” She screamed at him. Three steps down from her, his eyes were at eye-level with her breasts, and she watched as they darkened from the unusual caramel color to rich chocolatey brown. Then he looked at his feet.
Claire immediately moved cover herself, finding her hands weren’t adequate.
“Well?! What the fuck, Max?”
Quietly, still looking at his feet, Max replied, “You were screaming. And you left your door unlocked.”
Claire’s voice chilled with dawning realization. “You were in my bathroom.”
Max’s eyes snapped up at the statement, and she saw disbelief on his face before he snapped his gaze back down to his feet.
“No. I was working on my deck, and I heard you scream like you were being skinned alive. I came running.”
“You are unbelievable. You are so far up my ass, I can’t even breathe. Beautiful, yes, but holy shit! Can you be more controlling? I don’t even have anything to do with you besides live next door, and you’re like a man obsessed! Sneaking into my house to prove a point about my locks? Are you for real?!”
Originally, this was my first full-length novel, and it was awful. I hated to waste the year or so that I spent on it, so I cut it to shreds and turned it into my novella to offer free as a marketing technique. Well, that's worked okay, except based on the comments and reviews I've gotten, it's not a very good representation of my work as a whole.
In my re-write, I'm adding in some of the character's backstories, but I'm not just pasting it in from the original, because the original sucked. I'm actually rewriting it. And changing a lot.
Originally, it had six ghosts. Claire moved into her ancestral home to live with the ghosts of her great-great grandfather, great-great grandmother, great-grandma, an aunt, uncle, and her grandpa.
Yeah, ridonkulous.
And there were love interests. Lots of them. And death. And dreams of ghosts. And dreams of dead wives. And lots of bad writing.
Hopefully, this re-write will be better. The story is nearly unrecognizable from the original, even though I have pulled a lot of the elements from the first story.
I've almost finished it, actually. I'm hoping to have it finished by the end of this week. That would make me very very happy.
Here's a teaser from it...
After working in her garden, Claire jumped in the shower, excited to have hot water. She luxuriated in it. The stream of hot water cascading down her head, running over her shoulders, down her body was absolute heaven. After spending all week jumping in to get wet, turning off the water, soaping up, and then jumping in to rinse off as quickly as possible in the freezing cold water, this was paradise. The mirror was actually fogging up. Awesome. She soaped herself up, washed her hair twice, and shaved. As she was sitting on the floor of the tub, cleaning out from under her toenails, while the conditioner sat for the required two minutes in her hair, she saw a shadow pass outside the shower curtain.
The blood in her veins turned to ice, despite the heat of the shower.
“Hello?” That was dumb. No psycho-killer in his right mind would answer that. Suddenly, Claire remembered Max’s warning about the guys that had delivered yesterday, and she realized she hadn’t locked the back door behind her when she came inside.
She peeked out the edge of the curtain to see that whoever had been in there was gone. Sighing a relieved sigh, Claire gingerly stepped out of the shower.
A soft giggle sounded from somewhere behind her, and Claire screamed. She looked at the mirror and saw a perfect circle drawn into the fog on the glass where there had only been fog moments before. She screamed again and ran out of the room.
Her goal was to get down the stairs and to the back door and out of the house before the psycho-killer could catch her. Never mind that naked women always got the axe first in all those horrible movies. She couldn’t stop screaming. It was like she was possessed and couldn’t clamp her mouth shut.
She stumbled down the stairs, coming to an abrupt halt when she saw Max coming up them, panic in his eyes.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” She screamed at him. Three steps down from her, his eyes were at eye-level with her breasts, and she watched as they darkened from the unusual caramel color to rich chocolatey brown. Then he looked at his feet.
Claire immediately moved cover herself, finding her hands weren’t adequate.
“Well?! What the fuck, Max?”
Quietly, still looking at his feet, Max replied, “You were screaming. And you left your door unlocked.”
Claire’s voice chilled with dawning realization. “You were in my bathroom.”
Max’s eyes snapped up at the statement, and she saw disbelief on his face before he snapped his gaze back down to his feet.
“No. I was working on my deck, and I heard you scream like you were being skinned alive. I came running.”
“You are unbelievable. You are so far up my ass, I can’t even breathe. Beautiful, yes, but holy shit! Can you be more controlling? I don’t even have anything to do with you besides live next door, and you’re like a man obsessed! Sneaking into my house to prove a point about my locks? Are you for real?!”
Monday, August 26, 2013
Choosing Chase Review
I've just finished a sweet erotic short story called Choosing Chase, by Julie Raust.
In a word, awesome.
This was a quick, hot little read that packed a lovely little punch. The main character was a woman pushing forty, and I <3 older female characters who get all the action the younger things do. Especially with sexy men.
The only problem I had was that I wanted Chase's character to be a little more developed, but what can I say? The story delivered regardless.
This was the first story in about ten that was not the first installment in a serial novel, and that was nice. I'm a little over that marketing technique...
Pick up a copy and give it a read. Not disappointing.
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Choosing-Chase-Enough-Love-ebook/dp/B00EHU46AE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1377113105&sr=8-2&keywords=julie+raust
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