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

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.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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

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