amity

I am very excited to announce a new fairytale retelling will be coming out in December! The book is with the proofreader now, and details will follow soon (and as always, my newsletter peeps will hear first!).

First off, I am so sorry to any readers confused over the fact that there are two covers/two titles for the same book. Here’s what happened.

Originally, I published my book as Requiem. It performed exactly as I expected. My other books are fantasy with happily-ever-afters and light romance. I get mail gushing about how happy those books make people. Requiem, however, is a very different book. Dark fantasy, sad, no romance. I knew going in that the overlap between my existing audience and those who would like Requiem might be small, but I wanted to publish it anyway. It’s still an Amity book, with deep characters who change and face the consequences of their actions. I felt Kaedra’s story a worthy one that might help someone. So I published it, full aware that it may take a decade or more to make back my investment.

Requiem, as expected, doesn’t sell as well as my other books. It’s polarizing. Either a reader loves it or it’s absolutely not for them. There simply doesn’t seem to be middle ground. And I’m totally fine with that. Even my favorite authors I don’t adore every book of.

However, summer of 2021, I became very ill. As my health worsened, I became unable to focus on my writing, and–like many with declining physicality and time to dwell, my thoughts got pretty negative. I began (strange to me today) to wonder if maybe I had messed something up with the book. Something with the cover, with the launch. Had I failed it? Maybe there was something more I could do to reach readers who may love it. And so I connected with a service meant to ‘troubleshoot’ floundering books.

I accepted every single scrap of advice given. I made the cover very dark fantasy. I changed out the keywords. I changed the title. I republished the book as Requiem Transformed, thus erasing all of the relevancy Amazon had built for it in its algorithms. But the thing that bothered me the MOST is that republishing, according to Amazon’s new terms, erased my reviews.

You only have twelve reviews, others told me. It’s not a big deal!

But… to me it is. It means so much when a reader takes the time to review my work. Whether they hate it or adore it, I value the time a reader spends to write their impressions on a book. And for Requiem, several of those reviewers had never reviewed anything ever on Amazon. That, to me, is an extreme honor.

But again, I was very sick. My best friend, bless her heart, joked that I was the ‘not-quite-walking-dead’ because, in fact, I was too weak to walk. I took the advice of the Guru at full value, republished the book, and went into surgery.

Now, regaining my strength and health, my mind is in a very happy place. And… I sort of adore my old cover. It looks like Amity. It looks like my book. And re-examining all of their suggestions… their suggestions are all wrong.

Because it turns out I wrote a book that does not fit on any one shelf. Books like Requiem are near-impossible to market.

There is love in Requiem, but it is absolutely not a romance. There are undead, but not traditional zombies or even ghosts. The world is a unique world with unique magic, and so it doesn’t fit on paranormal or supernatural shelves. It’s not horror. There’s tension, but I wouldn’t call it scary. It’s written in both first-person present tense and first-person past tense. There is darkness and light, heartbreak and hope, and a lot of death.

And I’m okay with that.

So on November 8th Requiem Transformed will be allowed to come down and the original Requiem (with its twelve reviews!) will be back up. The paperback has already been switched out. I am very excited to have it back, and I promise, it won’t happen again.

There’s going to be a temporary slow-down of my newsletter releases. Instead of twice a month, the newsletter will come out on the fourth Friday of every month.

The main reason is, due to the pandemic, my childcare has been nearly non-existent for a year. Four kids, the youngest only one years old (and a night-owl to boot, for this early-morning momma), plus homeschool… It is a lot. I AM STILL WRITING. But, writing takes time, and the time I have available is a fraction of what it was. Pre-pandemic, I thought I could easily release a book every six months. But when I look at the number of new words written this year…

Something has to give.

At the moment, one of the things being jettisoned is an issue of the newsletter. Once my productivity levels increase, I’ll reinstate the bimonthly schedule. Until then, thank you for your patience, and I’ll keep you all updated (especially if you’re getting my monthly newsletter!).

I am very excited to announce that my third book, Requiem, is out today! The paperback sometimes takes a bit to work its way into existence in the stores (Goodreads is also always slow) but the ebook is available now at Amazon and, when I checked, Kindle Unlimited is showing it if you search for my name.

Thank you all for your patience. Requiem is a sad book, very different in tone from my others, so I have a bit (truckloads) of nervousness with its release. But then, I’m a wreck with every release. So. Yeah.

For my readers who dislike sad books, don’t worry! There are other books in the pipeline. And if you’re on the fence (ie, you usually don’t read dark fantasy but gosh you like my other books so maybe…), please go to Requiem’s page on my website. There’s a link there to the sample. The first chapter pulls no punches and you should get a good idea if it’s your kind of thing or not. I’m a big sample-before-you-buy girl myself.

Thank you all again for your patience! Until next time…

Just popping in to say I have a new book coming out mid January! Requiem is my third book, a dark, sad fantasy about death and living with death. Cover is on my home page (goodness, I love that cover). Stay tuned for the book blurb and more information 🙂

I cannot believe that on October 15th, Unseen Beauty will have been out for one year.

In celebration, Amazon will have Unseen Beauty on sale for one week only on both the US (.com) and UK (.uk) markets!

Start: October 15, 4am PST / 11am GMT

End: October 22, 12am PST / 12am GMT

Ebook only: 99¢ or £0.99

If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, this is the time!