Friday 19 December 2014

FREE FOR CHRISTMAS: Love In The Gilded Age


Love In The Gilded Age is FREE for this weekend. If you've been wanting to buy it but not got around to it or had enough money, now is the time to read it! Head over to Amazon UK | US | DE and download it now. If you don't have a kindle, you can even read it on your computer/android/apple device by downloading the Kindle app.

Love In The Gilded Age is a collection of short stories inspired by Grimm fairy tales, with a focus on race, sexuality, and disability representation. If these things interest you, get LITGA now. If these things don't interest you, get LITGA anyway - it's free. Want more info about the stories? - go here.

Offer ends 21st December.

Happy holidays, everyone!
~Saruuh

Sunday 7 December 2014

DECEMBER: New ideas and a Lux Guardians question

I think I completely skipped over November's blog post. Unsurprising, if you count the fact it was my most stressful month of the past two years and I've been growing a new book idea. I don't want to say much about the book so far, since it's only a baby idea, but I have codenamed it ApocalypseGirls.

And now for the question portion of the blog post. This is aimed primarily at people who don't own copies of The Lux Guardians, or wouldn't be opposed to owning more than one copy.

You've probably noticed by now that the waiting list for The Forgotten is closed, because a year has passed since its release, and my answers on when it will next be available as paperback have been pretty vague. My plan was to completely redesign the jacket (which I have done) and rerelease all four books shiny and new a year after The Union (i.e. in 2017) for you to purchase when the waiting lists are all shut down. 

But since that leaves a good three years without any TF paperbacks available, I thought I would pose this question before I concreted any decisions: would you rather I wait until 2017 and release all four books together, or release them staggered so you can, for example, get a paperback of The Forgotten next year?

If you're alright with just having an ebook of The Forgotten (or The Wandering and The Revelation when their waiting lists close) I'm content to wait to release The Lux Guardians in their new covers, but I just thought I'd ask, since I am, after all, releasing these books for readers.

~Saruuh

Thursday 30 October 2014

Love In The Gilded age pronunciation guide.

In case you missed my influx of posts and tweets, Love In The Gilded Age released this week. 

Because the stories are set in a high fantasy world, they carry a big amount of unfamiliar names. I know some people prefer not to have things such as these guides, and I understand that. Once the stories have left me, they belong you readers anyway, so it's up to you to decide how things are said. But I also know there's a bunch of people who appreciate a bit of direction, and I wanted to make a guide handy for those who want it.

There's no strict rule that these are the only acceptable pronunciations, but this is how I said the names as I wrote them:

Cities/Towns

Linxe - one syllable. Like the cat lynx.
Voivaren - VOI.varr.en. First sound rhymes with toy, the second sound rhymes with bar and car, and the last is basically en.
Sorrin - SORR.in.
Taul - one syllable. Rhymes with Paul and haul.

Characters

Xanna - XAN.na. First sound rhymes with van and can, and the last sounds exactly how it looks: na
Kiejn - KEY.enn
Koal - one syllable. Like coal.
Niesk - NEE.esk.
Kerenne - Kerr.ENN. First sound rhymes with burr and fur, the last sound rhymes with ten.
Elyn - ELL.in.
Rosany - ROSE.an.ee
Auriiel - AUR.ee.ell - First sound rhymes with oar and boar, and the last two are pronounced how they look.

Hope this helps clear a bit of any confusion that might arise. Just comment if there are any other words you'd like me to add to this.
~Saruuh

Wednesday 29 October 2014

OCTOBER: Fairy tales and first chapters (including an excerpt of Love In The Gilded Age!)

 The Wandering is now out in the world in shiny paperback form!! It's very pink and, in my opinion, very pretty. If you signed up to the waiting list, your copy is winging its way to you right now. You can find a couple photos of The Wandering over on my instagram (and follow me if you're into books and photos of my cat.)

But this month isn't only the paperback release of The Wandering - it's the month Love In The Gilded Age comes out! It's not actually set in the Gilded Age, rather a fantasy world called Fissure, and is an anthology of fairy tales retold with a focus on diversity. The title is a nod to one of the fairy tales -  Rumplestilskin - in which the protagonist is expected to spin straw into gold. All the main characters of the anthology are people of colour, one of them is a lesbian, and one of them is disabled (a supporting character also has partial hearing.) LITGA explores themes and ideas I think traditional fairy tales lack - ladies saving themselves (and other ladies!), ladies being in charge of their sexuality, and so on.

It's out today, so I hope you'll check it out and buy it. It's just 99 cents/77 pennies and available on Amazon for Kindle. If you want to read the blurb or know more about the anthology, click the other books link on the navigation bar above, or visit my website.


Want a sneak peek at Love In The Gilded Age?
Read on for the first chapter of A Fortress of Thorns, a retelling of Brier Rose (Sleeping Beauty)

Tuesday 23 September 2014

SEPTEMBER: Of wanderers and sequels

It's the 23rd of September and the sequel to The Forgotten is finally released!! You can get it free from Smashwords right now and from B&N and iBooks in a couple days. It's on amazon for $0.99 but if you report the lower price at B&N or Smashwords (please do this!) we should be up and running and $0.00 in a few days! If you've yet to read The Forgotten, you can find that for free in the same online retailers.

I don't have much to talk about this month, other than to say I'm gearing up for the release of Love In The Gilded Age (28/10) and very excited to finally behold The Wandering in print form. And as promised last month, here is a snippet of each of the main six in The Wandering. Some are from their POV, some are not. Enjoy.


Honour

I’ve always believed what the Officials told me. I never questioned them, not even once. I might have thought I did, but deep down I believed everything they said. 

Horatia

Staring at a twisted chair, I think, I can’t tell Tia about what might have happened to her. She’s not a carrier—The Guardians know that much—but States could have done God knows what to her, made her into anything. 

Branwell

I’d like to feel clarity now. Well, what I really want is to be curled up in the window seat in Bennet’s bedroom, her shoulder resting against mine, listening eagerly to whatever cheap paperback I’d picked up that week. But since that’s about as possible as growing wings and flying away from my loss, I’ll accept being in this box room with two girls who are fast becoming my friends. 

Bennet

I have no choice but to remain here, and I won’t waste the rest of my life on moaning and melancholy. Not when this City has so much to offer me.

Yosiah

It’d be a lot easier if I could just let things lie, if I didn’t have to know the truth. But I’ve never been like that. I never could just go along with something without knowing the details and now that I have access to information about Great Britain and the rest of the world, I want to know it all.

Miya

I’m there again—on the train. Another version of myself stands at Yosiah’s side, her life falling apart when she sees the resolute expression on his face. I’m somewhere in the crowd, watching myself. I don’t want to watch. I know what will happen.

I have to stop it.


Tuesday 12 August 2014

AUGUST: Of fairy tales and funding

I appear to have totally skipped over July's blog post. Oops. It's probably a good thing I didn't have much to tell.

Now it's August and I have many things. I've already written about the FundTheWandering campaign, so I'll just briefly say it's still ongoing (until the end of August) and there's still plenty of time to claim your book swag rewards (jewellery and bookmarks and books!) and help me give people more free books.

The Wandering, the second book in the Lux Guardians series, comes out next month, and I've been working my ass off on getting it perfect for you all to read. I'm very happy with this book, and I hope you'll love its story and new characters (as well as the direction I took the old characters) as much as I do. The Wandering is the hardest book I've written so far, and a lot of myself has gone into it so I hope it lives up to The Forgotten.

The little breath of laughter that comes from her makes my heart flip in my chest, and I decide right there and then that I’m delirious. I must be coming down with a Strain. It’s the only logical reason for the heat rushing through me.

It comes out September 23rd in digital. If you want a paperback, you'll have to wait a little longer (not much), until October when the physical copies will be released. You can sign up to get one here if you haven't already.

But enough about The Lux Guardians. Here's the fairy tales quota of this blog post.

Love In The Gilded Age! I've already spoken a little about it in its announcement, but since it is now close to finished I can tell you the rest. It's part of a series of Diverse short story anthologies, and this anthology is set in a world called Fissure. There will be three stories in Love In The Gilded age, with many more in Fissure to come. Here is the contents of LITGA:

Xanna  - Little Red-Cap
Love In The Gilded Age - Rumplestiltskin
A Fortress of Thorns - Brier Rose

My personal favourite is Rumplestiltskin because I am more than a little in love with the characters, but I hope you'll love them all as I do. I've noticed most of being an author is writing things I love and hoping other people will feel the same. It's a nervy profession. Here's an excerpt from The Red House.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Elder Niesk said abruptly. “I’ve been wanting someone to avenge my death.”
Xanna must have misheard. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“My death, dear. I’ve been wanting someone to avenge it. It was my husband, you see. He stabbed me solid in the back and buried me in the rose garden.”
Xanna shot to her feet, knocking over her umbrella. She bent to retrieve it and held it close to her chest like a shield. “Osseil guide me,” she whispered, invoking the Saint of wisdom and knowledge. “I don’t understand. If you’re dead, how can I see you?”
“I’m a ghost, sweet. You’re seeing the image of my soul.”

Love In The Gilded Age is out October 28th in digital only. It'll be available on all the usual sites - Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, Smashwords etc. and will cost you less than a dollar!

Lastly, The Beast of Callaire is half price now - $1.54/£0.91 - so if you've been waiting for it to drop, get it now.

That's it for August. I'll have more about The Wandering next month, including a snippet of each of the main six characters.

~Saruuh

Saturday 26 July 2014

#FundTheWandering


YOU CAN FUND THE WANDERING HERE
ANY DONATION GETS A REWARD, NO MATTER HOW LITTLE.

With The Wandering’s release date getting ever closer (SEPTEMBER!!) I’ve organised a campaign to raise money for printing and shipping costs so I can get these books out to you ASAP.

The Wandering is the second book in the free Lux Guardians series, sequel to The Forgotten which you can get a paperback of by joining the waiting list online or download from various online retailers. The Wandering picks up the gang’s story right where The Forgotten left it, with a dangerous trek across the country, new locations, new characters, and continuation of the revolution Honour accidentally started in the first book.

I’m yet again going to be offering paperback copies of this book for no charge, which you can get by joining this waiting list.

As you can probably guess, printing these books aint cheap. But you lovely people can help with costs by donating via Paypal, and you get some pretty cool rewards for doing so!! Here’s what you can get:

Donate one single pound for your name in the acknowledgements of The Wandering.

Donate £3 for a charm bracelet. Choose between team good (The Guardians) and team bad (The Olympiae)

Donate £8 for a bookmark. Choose again between Guardians and Olympiae (but choose wisely. You’re a member for life.)

Donate £10 and have a character named after you. Or call a character Clement McClemently. Have fun with it.

Donate £25 and get a Super Rare paperback of A Compilation of Side Stories. You can’t get this anywhere else folks. They’re extremely limited.

Donate £50 and get a paperback of The Wandering when it’s all finished and shiny, plus a handful of other book swag.

Donate more than that and get everything under the sun. Seriously. Everything. You want one of my kidneys? Son, you got it.


My goal for this campaign is £250, which seems reeeeeally high but will in fact only get 15 The Wanderings printed and sent out to my lovely readers. If I happen to reach that goal, and surpass it, you can expect some extra awesome rewards (maybe a fancy Forgotten London map with all the zones on it, who knows? maybe tote bags.) The more money I get, the more books I will get printed :)

So please PLEASE think about donating even a spare dollar. This book, and this series, is really important to me, and I would hate for it to be inaccessible to readers, because that’s the exact opposite of what I wanted for this series. I wanted The Lux Guardians to be for everyone, even people who were penniless and couldn’t afford to buy it. (I just happen to have, predictably and ironically, made myself quite penniless in the process of publishing it.)

If you don’t have even a single pound to spare (and man, do I understand that) please, pretty please, share this post on twitter, facebook, your own blog etc, so your followers can see it. If I see you spreading the word about the campaign with the #FundTheWandering hashtag, I'll send you some stickers as thanks. Promo this campaign extensively, and you might even find a bracelet in your mailbox.

I’ll update the little counter at the top of the campaign page everyday, so you can track how the funding is going. The campaign runs through august, so you have until August 31st to claim your rewards.

Thank you for reading this hugeass post. Have a great day!

~Saruuh

Thursday 19 June 2014

JUNE: The Forgotten second edition, The Wandering progress & a new anthology

I wasn't sure I'd have much to write about this month, but it turns out I had a lot of news piling up, all of which I hope you'll find as exciting as I think it is.

Firstly, the second edition of The Forgotten has now gone to press, which means everyone who signed up for the waiting list last year (especially those in the first block of 20) will either be in possession of the book, or much closer to getting it, by the end of next month. There's been small design changes to the book jacket, but the content remains the same as always. There is, however, a small sneak preview of The Wandering in the back of it, which will, I hope, answer the question of what the heck happened to Bennet.

Here's the new jacket:

(click to make bigger)

My second bout of news is about The Forgotten's sequel, The Wandering. I've made considerable progress since I last wrote of it, and if you follow my tumblr you might have seen a few unedited snippets. My tentative release for The Wandering is September 23rd, though it may be pushed back to October 7th (though no later) should any delays with betas arise.

The blurb is as follows:

Honour Frie has escaped Forgotten London, but he’s not happy and he’s not safe yet. His sister is mute with grief, what remains of his family is suffering, and when The Guardians lose faith in their purpose, Honour is tasked with restoring it. But inciting the rebellion isn’t something that comes easily to Honour, and with every burden weighing on him, cracks appear in his sanity.

Branwell Ravel will do anything to reunite with his missing sister, but with no word of her for months he’s lost hope of saving her. Bennet Ravel doesn’t want or need to be saved. She has a purpose. She will avenge her father—she will kill the President of States—no matter the cost.

Miya and Yosiah have fought everything together—Officials, Strains, starvation, and even their own feelings for each other—but will they stay together when the secrets between them grow too vast to stay hidden? Or will they fight each other?

With a dangerous journey to Bharat and a plot to overthrow States’s Ordering Body, the second instalment of the Lux Guardians series will wrench everyone to their breaking points.

You can sign up to the waiting list for a free copy here. Same policies apply as to The Forgotten: it's a first come, first served basis, please enter your address correctly or you won't receive it, and though I hope to get books sent out ASAP, delays are inevitable and I hope you'll forgive those.

I have a limited number of review copies available for The Wandering (there are only 5 places left) so if you're looking to review it, get your name down now.


Thirdly, I have a new anthology due for release this October. It's called Love In The Gilded Age, and is a collection of fairy tale reimaginings, and like all my other works, LITGA has a focus on diverse heroes and heroines. It will be available in ebook only for the time being, and is the first installment in a series of diverse anthologies called Fissure Chronicles.

The very brief summary is this: 



In an original epic fantasy world, Love In The Gilded Age reimagines the heroes and heroines of Grimm fairy tales as ethnically diverse, LGBT, disabled, and gender flipped. 


Here's a snippet to tide you over until October:

There is an ocean: In the infinite distance, between one hidden world and the next, is an unmeasurable expanse of twenty seas. One sprawling edge of the world to another is filled with waters as beautiful as they are deadly, as miraculous as they are fraught. Treasure and treachery litter their ocean beds, sleeping side by side with adventurers whose travels ended abruptly, lives caught and held under a wave until all breaths fled.

Seas shallow and deep, wide and thin as shards, transparent as glass and dark as pitch. The black sea, the silver sea, the sea of hidden wealth. The bright sea, the far sea, the star gem sea—bright and depthless as the most precious stone.

There is a land: Tucked into a corner where four oceans fold together, land rises up illustrious in a jagged slash of mountains and forests, with secrets and wonders as plentiful as any water.

In the far south blustering winds sear brown grass, and a only rocky line of mountains can withstand the vicious heat that cripples men. In the far north cold has formed cities of frost; towns are littered with snowflakes and buried under a sheet of emptiness. And betwixt the two, a realm spread out like the curve of a body, perfectly temperate, perfectly formed, with plains flat and vast, mountains short and gentle, forests as abundant as Crown Fish in the rivers that snake into all three realms, and life—life in every crease of every hill, farm, and town.

There are chronicles: Not of the twenty savage seas but of the fissure of land and the people who sigh life into it.

~Saruuh

Saturday 10 May 2014

May: Progress and procrastination

We're only 9 days into May but I am already behind schedule ... and AHEAD of another schedule. Yeah, you read that right. You're not going mad. Ahead. There are a lot of words getting put to page on a lot of different projects right now, and I thought, since I only tend to post unedited snippets of The Lux Guardians books, it'd be a welcome change to post some works in progress excepts from everything else.

These are all majorly unedited so forgive any typos.

...

“We can’t just keep sitting around. Fray’s out there! Numina knows what they’re doing to her. She could already be dead. I won’t stay here planning when she could be dying somewhere. I’m going to find her.”

“No you’re not,” Mavers says calmly. “You’re not going anywhere, and nobody is going with you. You won’t get far without help.”

“She’s got help.” The voice comes from behind me and at first I don’t recognise it. It’s cold and steely, strong and determined. Cornelia. Her wispy hair has been collected into a pale bun on top of her head. She stands with her hands on her hips and the sight of her is such a shock for a minute—I’d forgotten she was here, at the Academy—that I don’t process what she said. “I’ll go with you,” she says to me. “My sister is missing too, and I’m tired of waiting for something to happen.”

Mavers sighs behind me. I don’t turn back to him. “And what do you plan to do?”

Make it happen.”

... 

I wake up in a small bedroom. There’s a floral pattern on the duvet and the curtains are thick lace. For a hazy second I think I’m in the spare room at my grandmother’s house but the woods and the strangers come back to me in a heavy second. I gasp, pushing myself up and scrabbling out of bed.

The old woman is stood in the doorway, watching me. I push my back against the wall, suddenly scared of what’s happened to me while I slept. They’re Numina—they have to be—they could have taken my Majick, or activated it, or anything.

“Are you a Numen?” I whisper.

The woman inclines her head. I try to get my breathing under control. Yasmin will come for me. It’ll be fine. Yasmin will come.

...

He laid his head in her lap, giving himself over entirely to her mercy. She could find a way, if she were inventive, to cut his throat right now. The buckle on his belt looked sharp enough, and failing that she could break his neck on the frame of her chair. He knew—he knew she could hurt him if she chose to, and still he submitted to her decision.

That, in the end, was what convinced Kerenne of his truthfulness. Slowly, her apprehension pounding a rhythm in the base of her throat, she lifted her hand and used her fingers to comb through the prince’s dark hair. It was as soft and thick as the luxurious gowns high Voivaren ladies wore to the rare balls her village held.

The prince flinched at her touch but the tension melted from his shoulders after a second. His breath stirred the plain shift dress over her knees, a long expelling of air that suggested relief.

“So,” Kerenne said after a while, curling a lock of his hair around her finger, “how do we kill the king?”

...

“I’m all alone.” She buried her face in her hands and Auriiel couldn’t bring herself to leave this stranger she had kissed and woken from a hundred year’s sleep.

“Not all alone,” she said quietly.

“No.” Rosany raised her head and smiled. It was a beautiful smile, one that lifted her face into an echo of happiness. If the queen were truly happy, Auriielle thought, she would be more radiant than even the most southern sun.

Auriielle felt the air between them thickening long before she realised what it was. The moment stretched between her and Rosany, thick and dense, ensnaring Aurielle in the deep deep desire to kiss Rosany again.

Rosany kissed her first.

...

Next time I make a post I should have an exciting announcement to make, if all goes well.  You might have noticed the new addition to the books on my website - it has something to do with that ;)

Have a good weekend, all
~Saruuh

Thursday 24 April 2014

Regarding the Accidental Early Release

The more twitter-ly active of you will notice that THE BEAST OF CALLAIRE has published a month early. While this is great for you (the book a whole month early!) it's not so great for me (crippling unprofessional-ism!) I had intended for the book to drop on May 20th, you know ... its actual release date, but my printer was vastly wrong in estimating how long it would take for the book to be in stores (read: 8 weeks now means 2 weeks! Take note. In a fortnight it will be June.)


But this means you can now get The Beast of Callaire in glorious paperback, AND in digital!!


Digital: Kindle | Nook | iTunes

If you have a few dollars spare, I'd love it if you gave my book a chance. I've extended the pre-order swag reward, so if you email proof of purchase to saruuhkelsey@hotmail.com I'll send you some awesome book swag.

If you enjoyed the Wicked Lovely or Shiver series, you might like this - paranormal romance, dubious characters, sweet love interest (no bad boys or girls here.) Here's the full blurb:

Yasmin is a descendant of the Manticore. A creature of Persian mythology. A Legendary.

But she doesn’t want to be. Unlike the Legendaries in The Red, Yasmin wants nothing more than an ordinary life. She tries to fool herself into believing that she doesn’t change into a beast every full moon and savagely kill innocent people.

But when Yasmin starts hearing a voice in her head and is drawn into dreams that aren’t her own, she is led to Fray—a girl who once saved Yasmin from hunters, who has shadowy memories that hint at her having Legendary magic—and Yasmin is catapulted into a life of Majick and malevolence.

Despite the danger around her and Fray, Yasmin might finally have a chance at being a normal girl with a normal girlfriend. But with Legendaries being killed, a war between the Gods brewing, and the beast inside Yasmin becoming stronger each moon, her mundane life is little more than a dream.

Tuesday 8 April 2014

Swag for all pre-orders!

If you didn't know, The Beast of Callaire is up for pre-order. In just over a month, it'll be out and people will be able to do crazy things, like read it. I'm very excited for its release and I hope you are too, but if you're not I'm here to change your mind with bookmarks and bribery!


Whenever you pre-order The Beast of Callaire, no matter whether physical or digital, I'll send you a swag pack of 2 signed postcards, 2 stickers, and 1 charm bookmark. They look like this:

Sorry for the terrible photo quality.

If you're wondering what the charms are, they're a moon, a tree, and an arrow - all three of which are very significant to the book.


You can preorder THE BEAST OF CALLAIRE here on my blog in paperback (signed, fancy, and personalised), or from Barnes & Noble for NOOK, or iBooks for Apple devices. You won't be able to pre-order from Amazon, much to my frustration, so sorry about that! But if you have a nook or an ipad/pod/phone (and let's face it, who doesn't?) you can get the book to read on there.


And: the ebook is only $3.48/£1.99!

All you need to do is send proof of purchase (a screencap or photo of your receipt, though without all your personal details and such) along with your mailing address to saruuhkelsey@hotmail.com and I'll send your swag out to you ASAP. But make sure you send proof of purchase before May 18th or it won't count as a pre-order!

This reward is open to all countries.

Go forth and pre-order! And if you share/promo this post/the book in any way, I'll send you a few extra stickers. Everyone needs extra stickers, right?

~Saruuh

Sunday 30 March 2014

Camp Nano (again...)

It's that time of year again. The one where I try to accomplish something totally un-accomplishable. At this point I literally cannot remember what I wrote for Camp Nano last year, though I'm sure I wrote something.

This year, though, I'm doing something completely new to me: an anthology. And not just that but an anthology of Grimm retellings - something I have only worked on before for a short amount of time, and which went terribly not-good. Hoping these retellings will be much better, and nicer to me.

I can't say much about the stories, other than I am very excited about them, and they're YA high/epic fantasy set in a completely new world called Fissure. If you follow my instagram you might have seen my map drafting a few days ago. 

The anthology will be heavily diverse, i.e. inclusive of ethnicity (though not the exact same ethnicities we have, since it's not set on Earth), sexuality, and disability. I'm also hoping to switch up a few fairy tales to turn the kind and gentle kings into queens, and the wicked queens into kings because feminism and trope inversion. 

Also Bluebeard is a woman now.


So that's what I'm doing this April.

~Saruuh

Monday 17 March 2014

The Lux Guardians update!

Do you want the good news or the good news?

I'll start with slightly-not-good news: The Revelation won't be released until Spring 2015. But - good news: The Revelation isn't book two in The Lux Guardians series.

I realised recently that the reason The Revelation wasn't happening, why its plot wasn't moving fast enough, why all the important things weren't happening, was because the characters and the series just wasn't ready for it yet. When I knew that, I could go forward with writing book two, and since then I've got a considerable amount of it fixed. Not that it needed fixing, I was just too dumb to realise what it was - the book that needed to be written, needed to happen, before The Revelation could. I hope that makes sense.

Either way, if it doesn't, just know that everything is going according to plan now.

The second good news: because of this realisation, and because I know exactly what this second book needs to accomplish and how to get it there, it will be released in time for the original release date October 7th. But better than that - it will be released ahead of the original release date. I'm thinking August but don't hold me to that. I still have schedules to plan and work around other books I'm writing.

To put it simply: you will have the second book of The Lux Guardians this Autumn. This also means the series will be four books now, instead of three.

Anyway, here's the cover. It doesn't match the alleyway scene of the other two covers, but since it fits the feel of the book, I'm not too bothered by it.


What do you think? Would you rather it matched the alleyway covers for The Forgotten and The Revelation? Let me know your thoughts.

~Saruuh

Wednesday 12 March 2014

THE BEAST OF CALLAIRE Pre-order & ARCs


I'm a little delayed making this post because I've been extra busy this past week. But The Beast of Callaire is now available for physical pre-order! And not only do you get your book faster than people who don't pre-order, get it signed and personalised, and have the extra bonus of making me squeal with joy, but you get free swag. A fancy metal bookmark with beads and pretty charms, postcards, and stickers! 


This swag package is available for all who pre-order in both digital and paperback forms (and send proof of purchase) - digital pre-orders will go up in the next month on Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, and (with a slight delay) iBooks. I'm sure Sony Ebooks will also offer it for pre-order too, but I'd have to check that and I am quite lazy, plus nobody has yet downloaded any of my books through Sony, so I'm thinking it's a less popular vendor. 

But that's enough about pre-orders. Look at my shiny new proofs! Complete with grumpy teenage Nolan who did not want to participate in photo taking! Click to enlarge.






Ahh so pretty. So comfy to lay on!
Here's the form to request an ARC, if you're interested in reviewing.

Hope you're all having lovely Wednesdays.
~Saruuh

Tuesday 4 March 2014

On negative reviews...

I probably shouldn't enjoy getting negative reviews half as much as I do. Every time a review for The Forgotten or Under comes in I inflate with joy. Really. I inflate, like a balloon, or like Harry Potter's aunt. Before I had reviews, I thought they were just a really cool thing to have. People reading my book and saying things about it! Maybe they even liked a couple of things! But I've since learned the error of my ways. Reviews aren't just cool and exciting and humbling ... they're extremely helpful.

It's been nine months since The Forgotten was first published, and I have an equal amount of positive and negative reviews (possibly one side is more than the other, I haven't compared numbers). What these opinions have done for the Lux Guardians series, though, is much wider than maybe recommending the books to a handful of people. 

Reviewers have pointed out things about TF that are blindingly obvious to me now, but never occurred to me before. Like, for example, six POVs is far too many (Why did I think that was a good idea? Rookie mistake!) and they switch far too often, leaving the reader disconnected from the characters. Also people find it confusing for the same reason and are unable to keep up with the plot (though that may just be related to the plot itself, which is admittedly convoluted and complex - for good reason.)

This isn't to say I don't enjoy reading positive reviews because I do. I love them. I squee. I freak out. People enjoyed my book?? It cannot be! But negative reviews aren't completely worthless. Well, not the ones that give reasons, anyhow. If your reviews are all 'THIS BOOK IS TERRIBLE! AWFUL! THE DEVIL'S WORK!" I probably wouldn't pay much attention, but critical reviews ... those are gems.

Wednesday 19 February 2014

The Sequel Situation

This just in: sequels are hard! Not impossible, but damn hard. I heard every author ever saying sequels were as difficult as bleeding a stone but I didn't listen. Well now I am listening.

If you follow any of my social networks/Goodreads/this blog, you'll know that the sequel to my debut is due out in October. And my work on THE REVELATION was going great, until I hit a major stumbling point - I lost interest in my manuscript. I wasn't enjoying what I was writing, and it was becoming akin to a chore. Which was a huge red flag for me. So I decided to take a step back, focus on editing THE BEAST OF CALLAIRE for a couple of weeks. Which I have done.

Upon reflection, the 60,000 words of The Revelation that I have written have absolutely no plot whatsoever. Nope. None. Not anywhere. There's a lot of walking, moving from place to place. There's a lot of whining and reflection from Honour (par for the course, really), but there's no force driving him. The same goes for Miya, Branwell, Yosiah, Bennet, Dalmar, Hele, and Timofei. I've started to think of them as The Gang - the major characters around which the story and turning points revolve. Those are the guys that are moving the book along.

Except they're kind of ... not.

But! I can see where the book needs to go for half of The Gang, and I have a few major story arcs that will give TR plot! *angels sing* The bad news: it's gonna take me a while to work out the rest of The Gang's driving force, and after that the book is going to need A Total Rewrite. *shudders*

So it's unlikely I'll meet the October release date. Which I felt absolutely wretched about for a long time. I thought I was trash. Until the third Mara Dyer book got pushed back, and I became so miserable working on TR that I just decided it wasn't worth the unhappiness. If Simon and Shuster get three push backs, I can have one. So that's what's happening: THE REVELATION is pushed back until January 2015 at the earliest.

But the extra good news is that I am going to try my damnedest to get two Lux Guardians books out next year. And because I won't be sending out copies of TR this year, I can send extra paperbacks of The Forgotten. So it's not all doom and disappointment. I hope!

Hopefully the next time I have news of The Revelation, I'll have a plot and a non-boring book!

~Saruuh

Saturday 15 February 2014

The Beast of Callaire cover, snippets + giveaway


This week the shiny cover for The Beast of Callaire was revealed. As you can see it features the main lady Yasmin, a purple/gold colour scheme and some nods to Yasmin's shape-shifting nature (the moon, the wings, the trees of the woods) Personally, I really love it. It's my favourite of all my covers so far, and I've had some pretty good feedback on it. I hope everyone loves it!

Below is the full wrap-around cover with the blurb, though it's subject to small changes. I'm quite the perfectionist, and will be tinkering with the finer details right up to the minute it's printed.


(Click to make bigger!)

The Beast of Callaire will be available to buy on Amazon in paperback, and digitally for Kindle, on B&N, Sony Ebooks, Apple iBooks, and Smashwords. Preorder links will magically appear at the beginning of April, and I hope you'll preorder. There'll be some rewards and swag for those who do.

If you want to win an advanced reading copy of BEAST, you can do so by entering the giveaway below.


And lastly, I posted a bunch of snippets on twitter to celebrate Friday (read: Valentine's Day).



I hope this convinced you to check out The Beast of Callaire. If not, I still have three months. Challenge accepted. If you wanna know more, click on the Legend Mirror tab on the nav bar.

Hope everyone had a good Friday and got a metric tonne of chocolate.
~Saruuh

Saturday 1 February 2014

The long overdue Legend Mirror post.


I've been meaning to make this post for over a week now, but here it is: My next series is called The Legend Mirror, and the first in series THE BEAST OF CALLAIRE will be released May 20th! It's a YA Fantasy with LGBT Paranormal Romance, Mythology, magic, and shape-shifters. 

The full summary of The Beast of Callaire is:

Yasmin is a descendant of the Manticore. A creature of Persian mythology. A Legendary.

But she doesn’t want to be. Unlike the Legendaries in The Red, Yasmin wants nothing more than an ordinary life. She tries to fool herself into believing that she doesn’t change into a beast every full moon and savagely kill innocent people.

But when Yasmin starts hearing a voice in her head and is drawn into dreams that aren’t her own, she is led to Fray—a girl who once saved Yasmin from hunters, who has shadowy memories that hint at her having Legendary magic—and Yasmin is catapulted into a life of Majick and malevolence.

Despite the danger around her and Fray, Yasmin might finally have a chance at being a normal girl with a normal girlfriend. But with Legendaries being killed, a war between the Gods brewing, and the beast inside Yasmin becoming stronger each moon, her mundane life is little more than a dream.


A cover reveal is taking place on February 12th (if you'd like to be involved, send an email to saruuhkelsey@hotmail.com) and a blog tour is being organised for May! Sign ups will be available soon, so keep an eye out if you're interested.

I can't wait to unleash this book on the world. It's been my brainchild for the better part of a year now and a LOT of work has gone into it. If you want to know more about The Beast of Callaire and the world of The Legend Mirror, you can follow the Tumblr and the Pinterest board and, as always, keep up to date with Twitter and Facebook.

AND FINALLY if you share this post/the BEAST blurb/the Goodreads page, leave a comment below with a link and your email address, and I'll send you out some Legend Mirror swag, including stickers and postcards! (Handy for use as bookmarks)

~Saruuh