4 lessons I've learned in 3 years of being published!

It's been a whole three years since The Forgotten came out! 

It's been an interesting journey since TF's release, and now I look back at the book, I can see it's rife with problems. But it's still dear to me because it's my first release, and because I love the characters. By this time next year, The Lux Guardians series will be complete, and the gang's journey will be wrapped up. You can expect more news on the last two books in the coming months.

Here are four lessons I've learned since publishing The Forgotten. Bear in mind this only relates to my experience as an indie author, and I can't speak for everyone.

Never NEVER announce the Big Shiny WIP

Chances are you won't finish it, and that'll be on the internet FOREVER, looking at you every time you go on Goodreads, wondering why you haven't finished it yet. (I really am going to work on it soon, though.) Don't ever post a cover, mock-up or otherwise, anywhere before the book is fully written either. I wait until I have a solid first draft that I am absolutely sure is going to become a published book before posting it anywhere online. (Series are a little different - if you've written the first book, it's a safe bet you're going to finish the series, so announcing those books or adding them to GR is a little less risky. For a larger series, I'd still wait, personally, until you've written 2 or 3 books.)

Blog Tours don't necessarily = readers and sales

Sure, you get some readers but I got maybe three sales from my last paid blog tour... In no world would I call that a success.

It's impossible to know what will = sales

I thought having THE BEAST OF CALLAIRE on Netgalley would generate interest in The Legend Mirror series and would lead to sales. I did get 10+ reviews but those reviews don't seem to have had any lasting affect. Netgalley exposure really works for some authors and some books. Blog tours really work for some authors and some books. You can't predict it in the least, and while that's frustrating (and costly!) you kinda just have to accept it and keep trying new things. At some point, somethings gonna work.

Keeping a record of writing progress leads to productivity

Now, this could be just me, but since I've started keeping track of my daily writing/editing/revising etc on a spreadsheet, I've had a much bigger output. I've gone from writing 20K or editing 200 pages a month to 40K and 500 pages. It's useful, and encouraging, to see your achievements laid out. Of course this works in reverse too - have a bad week and you have to look at it for a while and feel crappy. But the good outweighs the bad, and I'm more motivated and productive now than I ever was.

~

These lessons have made me a smarter author and a more efficient writer. Some things will never change (I'll always be impatient to announce what I'm working on) and by the time my fifth year as a published author comes around, I expect I'll have five more lessons to tell you. I'm constantly learning (as, I think, all authors are) and I'm interested to see what happens next.

You can download The Forgotten for free at all good online retailers!

~Saruuh

Words & Wonders (13)

Welcome to Words & Wonders, a weekly journal of writing updates, links I've found useful or interesting, and book recommendations. I hope W&W will prove to be useful to you writers out there as well as offering an insight into my writing progress for my readers. Don't forget to leave a comment with your own writing progress!

Read the first three chapters of THE DRYAD OF CALLAIRE: 1, 2, 3

In the Writing Cave, this week I have:

- Written 6,214 words of TLM3. I thought it'd be easier to get into writing this, since I just finished up DRYAD, but I was dumb to underestimate this book. It's a bitch. Anyway here's a quote I like:

“Where’s the money gonna come from for this?” Steph asks. “Hotels, travel, food, whatever else we’re gonna need—there’s always something—that’s not free. How much is this gonna cost, anyway?”
“An arm and a leg,” Guy grumbles, slouching in his chair.
“Hang on.” Rowan does something beneath the table, and it looks like he’s routing around mid-air for something he’s lost. He says, “I can’t do anything about the arm, but how’s this for the leg?” He produces a camo-painted prosthetic leg and waves it in the air—and everybody loses it.

In my life:

- I'm on my sixth book for ARC August and feeling pretty proud of myself. I'm on target!

On the internet, this week I found useful:

- This hilarious compilation of tweets about the icky language in sex scenes. Don't read this if you're sensitive to ~*sexy*~ language like moist and member.
- The three point structure, by Janice Hardy


Hope you all have a great weekend!!
~Saruuh

Words & Wonders (1)

Welcome to my new feature, Words & Wonders, a weekly journal of writing updates, links I've found useful or interesting, and book recommendations. I hope W&W will prove to be useful to you writers out there as well as offering an insight into my writing progress for my readers. Don't forget to leave a comment with your own writing progress!

First off I wanna PSA a giveaway I have going on Facebook, where you can win a Guardians dove brooch. Just comment on the status with your favourite book/TV/film rebel, be that Katniss or Peter Pan. It's open internationally!

In the Writing Cave, this week I have:

- Written 3,940 words of The Legend Mirror book 3, whi\ch is pretty dire for me during drafting. It's difficult to get back into the routine of writing after so long with no laptop to write on, but I think I'm getting there. Nothing can ever be as bad as writing The Wandering, when I had a 3 month writing block slap bang in the middle of drafting.

- Second drafted 45.5 pages of The Dryad of Callaire, and I am LOVING Susan Dennard's second draft method. I'm catching so many big picture issues that may have been otherwise overlooked. 

In my life:

- My laptop is terribly broken and in two parts (the screen back is literally hanging off) and I'm still waiting for the parts to arrive in the repairs shop. It's been three weeks since he was unbroken :(

- I found out my favourite show got cancelled. Farewell, Revenge, you were good (and awful) to me.

- I've rediscovered my love for Freelance Whales's Weathervanes, which happens literally every summer and is awesome.

On the internet, this week I found:

-Nothing, because I'm in a dark semi-internet cave while I focus on getting back into writing (because of my dire word output this week!) but I promise there'll be links in this section some time in the future! 

Here is a book I have loved recently:

The romance and characters in this are just perfect, and it's action-packed and has a great spy dragon thing going on! If you're interested in my full review, you can read that here.

Hope you're all having a great weekend!
~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