So in my first YouTube video I declare myself as author J.D.Groom‘s biggest fan. I’ve got the book, the mug, the coaster, the candle…
In my debut YouTube video, I share the fabulous Sorceress of Truth merchandise I got my hands on. We’ll have a closer look at the book, and I’ll discuss why this author means so much to me.
If you enjoyed this, you’ll love:
Book Review: Sorceress of Truth by J D Groom
Book Review: Envy by J D Groom
Have you checked out Parler yet? It’s very similar to Twitter but promotes free speech. So far I’ve found everyone friendly and welcoming, and the posts I share there display better.
Someone posted that they were struggling with writers block and the advice to “just write” no matter what, everyday, was not working for them.
I’ll admit, I don’t write everyday.
So, I came to the persons rescue with a few alternative suggestions. I honestly believe that just because a method was right for someone else, doesn’t mean it’s right for all. Everyone is unique.
Originally this was a four point list on Parler but then I had more ideas.
I hope you enjoyed my infographic and found it useful. If you’re on Parler, you can add me. I’m Redfae.
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Soul Heart Readers – Street Team
She doesn’t know it’s her birthday and she doesn’t want things yet. So, we’re just going to have a nice family day together.
There will be cake. And, we’ve bought her some presents. I can’t believe she’s two already!
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Launching my book feels so bizarre. On one hand it’s moving too quickly. On the other hand it feels like it’s not happening fast enough.
Release Date?
I don’t have a release date yet. I’m not setting one until I’m certain; no pressure to rush. I’ve waited a long time for this and I’m going to get it right.
As a member of my street team you’ll be the first to know everything!
You’ll be my first fans and get to help out with supporting my book launch. Here are a few of the activities you’ll be invited to take part in, no pressure…
Announcements
I’d love you to be involved in sharing my book announcements like:
Online Book Tour
I’d like you to be part of my book tour. This will take place leading up to the release & launch party.
You’ll have access to me to interview for your blog (or whatever platform you use). Feel free to share your ideas too and what works for your platform.
Members of the Street Team will be encouraged to share the Online Book Tour announcement. The announcement will list everyone hosting in the tour and how to find them.
I will promote the Online Book Tour and I will share your ‘event’ once published online.
Book Launch Party
You’ll be invited to my launch party.
I’ll be giving a shout out to those that hosted in the book tour and any Street Team members I see in attendance.
The launch party will celebrate the release of Ocean Heart. In addition, I’ve invited some authors I think you’ll love so you can discover them and their books too!
Plus, we’re planning a launch party giveaway! If you love books you’ll want to be there.
Exclusive media
I know how sometimes it’s hard to share an image as it doesn’t fit your social media style. That’s why I’m looking into a way to share with you images and text to enable you to create your own social media content to promote Ocean Heart too.
The sort of media this may include is:
Being in the street team you’ll hear about new ideas as they develop. For example, I’m thinking of doing an exclusive giveaway only open to my street team.
You can be as involved as you like. You won’t be penalised if you forget to share a pic or life gets in your way.
NB: If you are in the blog tour you will need to schedule your post for the date & time you promised otherwise when I send people to check it out, they’ll be disappointed.
Most of all, I want to develop a connection with you. I’m hoping that connection will last long after this adventure.
I hope you have so much fun, I’ll be able to interest you in my next book launch. Then we can do this all over again. ?
I almost forgot this bit. ?
Please head over to my Facebook Group: Soul Heart Readers – Street Team
This is a private group. When you join you’ll need to answer some simple questions and wait to be approved.
If you’re keen but not on Facebook- please private message me on the platform you follow me. I don’t want you to miss out, we’ll see if we can work around it.
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This a summary of the highs and lows of my writing this month.
My goals were:
You are about to discover neither of those goals were met. I failed Camp NaNo but hopefully you’ll agree my month was still a success when you see how much I did achieve off plan.
This has been one of the most exciting developments this month.
I had to complete a very in-depth questionnaire about my novel that challenged me to think about things I hadn’t thought about. I even did an Ingram Spark course and measured books from my bookshelf to figure out what trim size I needed.
The questionnaire also got me excited about the future of the series as it helped me visualise it becoming a reality and not just an idea in my head.
My cover designer sent me the first draft. I shared it with some close author friends to get their feedback. They loved it and didn’t want me to change a thing.
But, I’ve waited such a long time for this moment, I wanted the cover to be perfect. The cover was stunning but there were tiny details I wanted tweaked. I felt awkward asking for changes to such a gorgeous cover but my designer was so nice about it – actually she was excited to make it even better.
My cover designer sent me the second draft and it’s the one. I am now trying to work out how to do a cover reveal – eek!
I loved the blurb I wrote for Ocean Heart. Over the years I’ve tweaked it and used it on sites like WeBook to Wattpad.
I’m going to share a blog post on the “making of the blurb” but the new version is so much better. I’m glad I asked for help.
I wanted to finish the first draft of Sky Heart but when I opened the manuscript I was lost as to what was going on!
I went back to the start and began making notes on the chapters. I thought it was a good first draft. But, in my read through, I found so many mistakes. So many!
I’ll confess I am intimidated by the amount of work needed here. Although I haven’t been physically working on it, I have been thinking about how to develop and improve what I’ve got.
I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole in trying to find out the truth the mainstream news won’t report on. It started with the Coronavirus, then a few conspiracy theories… and recently anything about Jeffrey Epstein & Ghislaine Maxwell, and the full details of Johnny Depp vs Sun (Amber Heard’s accusations).
Before, I drag you off on a tangent, the reason I mentioned this is my search for the truth opened my eyes to more social media.
Parler (@Redfae)
Parler is similar to Twitter but without political biases. They allow content to be from both sides of an argument as long as you don’t breech their community guidelines.
The benefits are that the ‘tweets’ look nicer on Parler and there is more engagement (interaction).
The negatives are the link to my profile doesn’t seem to work, so I can’t share it. Also, I’m not into USA politics and Parler is heavily saturated with Trump supporters that have been silenced on Twitter.
YouTube (Ally Aldridge)
Thanks to learning about making videos for Noah’s channel, it’s made me think more about daring to make my own content.
This month I made and edited two videos and plan to launch my channel next month. Eek!
SuperFanz (Redfae)
This is kind of like an RSS feed for social media. My page is linked to my Instagram and YouTube. Whenever I post to those sites it appears in my SuperFanz feed. I’m still navigating the site but it looks good.
TikTok
I was very briefly on here to see what all the fuss is about. Then, I heard the site is mining data. I deleted the app but couldn’t see how to delete my account.
Story Origin
I’m still figuring this out but it seems to be a networking site for authors newsletters. They feature each other in their newsletters to boost each other.
I need to dare to get involved but I’m currently sitting on the sidelines trying to figure it out.
Book Bub
I joined this site but not figured out how to use it. It seems to be similar to Good Reads where you can review & recommend books and follow authors.
I think there are tools for authors to promote their books and give fans offers.
Ocean Heart has gone back to my editor for a final copy edit. We had a meeting to discuss some parts of my novel. It was great getting to speak to my editor, she’s really insightful and encouraging – whilst highlighting my mistakes.
My editor doesn’t think it’ll take me too long to go through the changes but… I worry I’m slower than most people.
Once it comes back to me, I’ll work on it for a month then send to my formatter.
Storyseller Academy
So, my goal this month was to do the Storyseller Academy course. When I got midway through the month and realised I’d still not had time, I was very cross with myself. I vowed to make it a priority. I’m not sure what happened but I still haven’t made any progress on this.
I honestly want to do this course and it frustrates me that it’s not happened. Why? Because it’s full of important content, I want to give it my full attention.
During the day, I’m very distracted. It can take me a whole morning to post on Instagram because the kids keep interrupting me. In the evenings, I’m often tired from the day and have to squeeze everything in from self care & time with my husband through to urgent actions for Ocean Heart.
This course is specifically about how to successfully sell your books which is what I need to learn very soon! I may just do it without taking notes – it’s not like I can’t re-watch the videos.
Ingram Sparks course
I did one of the free Ingram Sparks course to get a better understanding of the different book formats, sizes and trims etc.
YouTube course
I started a course on how to start a YouTube channel. I want to create an authortube/booktube channel with a little vlogging. It’s all bitesize learning.
Google Digital Garage in collaboration with Open University
I almost finished their digital marketing course. For a free course it was pretty good. It covers a lot of the basics about creating an online presence and when I finish it I’ll get a certificate – Yay!
Sea Witch by Sarah Henning
I read my physical books when Aria is asleep. She is the destroyer of books and it really upsets me when she destroys them. After a month of heavy editing, I am trying to spend more evenings with my husband. As a result, I’m now only up to chapter 26 – I estimate this as 75% if the way through .
When I should be reading, I’ve been watching the entire season of Warrior Nun and Cursed, both on Netflix.
Agent Undone by Cassidy Reyne
I usually read eBooks during the day but recently life has been full of day time distractions and this has taken a knock. I’m up to chapter 10 which my kindle says is roughly 30% through.
I’ve written three blog posts for World Indie Warriors. They are scheduled for August and all about how you can get involved in the WIW Brochure!
It hasn’t all been work, work, work. I literally took time off from my day job and spent a long weekend with my hubby and kids just chilling out together. We ate cheesecake and shushi.
If you enjoyed this, check out:
Why you need a developmental editor!
Thank you for agreeing to let me interview you again. This time is about Sam’s Story, the second book in your Wiccan Romances series.
Was it easier to publish book 2 & did you do anything different to how you published book 1?
It was much easier to publish book 2 as I already had a lot of the formatting saved on my memory stick from writing the first one, so where it took me a good couple of weeks to get the formatting correct on Amelia’s Story, it took probably half a day instead. The hardest bit about formatting is the cover and I know mine don’t quite match but I didn’t realise that until after I pressed print, so I’m stuck with it for these two but I’m hoping to make the next ones match one of the two covers.
Was writing the second book in a series easier or harder?
I found the writing experience easier, as I had some ideas of the best practices to follow and I planned out the major scenes I wanted to includerather than just making it up as I was writing. I also had a bond with the characters, which made it easier to know how they would react, but I found I had much more in common with Amelia because she is more like me than the characters in this book so in that respect getting their interests right and knowing what their motivations were was a bit harder.
Can you name any books similar to yours?
The books were partially inspired by the Harry Potter series, so there some similarities there but I can’t think of any other books I would compare Wiccan Romances to.
How many books do you anticipate in the series and what else can we look forward to from you?
There will definitely be another two books in the series but beyond that I haven’t decided. I might also release an ebook of all the spells and rituals I have made up during the course of writing, just as a sort of fun companion.
Do you believe in magic and have you ever cast a spell?
I do believe in magic, I once read a quote in a book which said that all women have a little bit of magic in them and that when it combines with others the results can be amazing and that really resonated with me but I have never personally tried to cast a spell.
Do you have any witch book, shows or movies you recommend?
I personally loved the original Charmed, I’m not such a big fan of the new version and I really like watching Supernatural, Dean Winchester is extremely hot. When I was younger, I was a big fan of the Wizards of Waverly Place and Sabrina the Teenage Witch, so I would recommend any of these shows to any fans of my books or just fans of paranormal TV.
Please share a snippet of Sam’s story?
Snippet 1:
Sam smiled to himself when he heard his brother get up and smirked, when Ben emerged from his room, yawning. Ben flipped his brother his middle finger as he stalked past him to go downstairs and get a cup of coffee. Deciding that he was onto a winner, Sam headed up to Lia’s bedroom to wake her up, just for fun.
“Morning Sunshine.” Sam called, walking into Lia’s room and plonking himself down on her bed.
“Eugh.” Lia moaned, rolling onto her stomach.
“Come on, you have an exam today.” Sam encouraged.
“My exam is in the afternoon.” Lia mumbled into her pillow.
“Oops, my bad.” Sam laughed. “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about Heather.”
“If you don’t leave right now, I’m going to tell her about the time you asked Ben for kissing tips.” Lia announced, flipping onto her side, so she could glare at her brother.
“You wouldn’t.” Sam gasped.
“What do you want, Sam?” Lia groaned.
“Nothing.” Sam replied, with a smile as he sauntered out of the room.
Snippet 2:
“You stole my girlfriend!” Charlie suddenly exploded.
Rocked by Charlie’s anger, all of the loose items in the car went flying around, hitting everyone, as the car vibrated, due to the minor earthquake he caused.
“Charlie!” David yelled.
“How did I steal your girlfriend?” Sam shouted, at the same time his dad tried to reprimand Charlie.
“You knew I was dating Emily, then you swooped in and stole her from me.” Charlie continued.
Where can we go to discover more and buy Sam’s story
Sam’s Story is available at all major online booksellers, including Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmiths and Barnes and Noble. It is also available in ebook format, including Kindle, Kobo, Nook and Ibooks.
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Behind the Book: Wiccan Romance – Amelia’s Story by Nicola Hebron
Book Review: Wiccan Romance – Amelia’s Story by Nicola Hebron
I’ve been busy lately, not that I have much to show for it. And, I realised it’s been a while since I shared a What To Watch list.
Here are my favourite redheads from popular TV Series.
Jessica from True Blood
At first I found this show difficult to watch because of the strong accents and I wasn’t prepared for all the sex. But, the show grew on me and Jessica was such an awesome character.
She starts off as a sweet religious girl, forced into the vampire world. As she adapts to her new life, and power, this good girl discovers her bad side…
Cheryl from Riverdale
This show is based on the Archie comics. The series starts with Cheryl and her twin brother dressed in white, going out onto the lake in a boat. But tragedy awaits the siblings when a soggy Cheryl makes it to shore but her brother is dead.
During the show Cheryl has many more iconic moments, like walking out of her home she’s set on fire and helping her friends armed with a crossbow.
Lydia from Teen Wolf
Lydia is popular, beautiful and intelligent. Who wouldn’t want to be her? Usually these characters are made to be a bitch but Lydia got a great story arc.
This redhead is a banshee and the storyline was great. Popular, beautiful, intelligent and now powerful too – what’s not to love?
Sanza from Game of Thrones
Sanza’s character went through a lot of challenges. She was forced to marry awful men as a lady – she was raped and physically and emotionally abused.
Don’t worry, by the end she is reunited with her siblings and they raise up against their enemies. Sanza now had power and realises she doesn’t need a man.
Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Willow started out as Buffy’s geeky friend. She was the sidekick. As the series progressed, Willow decided she needed a way to fight demons too and learnt witch craft.
Willow’s magic kept getting stronger and when her girlfriend is shot, she becomes the most powerful witch ever! It’s awesome! If only she could have tapped into her potential without such a great loss.
Claerie from Shadow Hunters
Clary thinks she’s an ordinary girl. She’s into her art and draws symbols in her pictures. She has no idea she’s destined to become a Shadow Hunter.
The Shadow Hunter’s are kind of like the police of the underworld (a bit like Buffy). The other characters in the series really compliment Clary and I love the werewolf, vampires and faeries.
Good Girls
Beth and her friends are just regular women trying to get through life and raise their kids. But, unfair things are screwing with their lives.
The girls take drastic action to fix their desperate financial woes… and rob a store. This act gets them wrapped up with a dangerous gang. Now they’re in deep with noway out and trying to keep their criminal records squeaky clean.
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What to watch if you love mermaids
What to watch – Shows with writers in
I wanted this book for so long, by the tine I got it, there’s a second edition! The bonus is, the new edition has even more content!
It’s part of the Writer’s Helping Writers series. The series includes a number of thesaurus covering different aspects such as character traits or settings. The aim of the books are to help writers find the words they need to make the impact they want.
The series is co-written by Angela & Becca.
Writers Helping Writers
The pair run a website together (https://writershelpingwriters.net) to share information to help writers.
One Stop For Writers
They also have developed an impressive web-app (https://onestopforwriters.com) that’s described as a library of resources and tools to support writers.
The one I got is on character expressions. It’s a thesaurus about different emotional responses and covers internal and external reactions.
You look up the emotion your character is feeling, like lust, confusion, envy, fear, betrayal, etc.
There’s a little description so you can check you understand what the emotion is and make sure you picked the right one.
It then has a list of ways a character might behave if experiencing this emotion.
There are also some suggestions for internal sensations, which is useful for 1st person POV.
There are even some suggestions on how the emotion can escalate or deescalate.
I used this book alongside the developmental feedback from my editor. She highlighted some points in my story where I needed to amp up the emotions and some places where I had skipped along without any reaction at all.
I looked up the emotion in the book and read the suggestions. I reflected on which reaction was most true to my character, then worked it in.
Future use…
This book will get used time and time again. I’m planning to next use it alongside writing Sky Heart. Hopefully it’ll reduce any feedback from my editor about under played or missed emotions.
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Why you need a developmental editor!
So, I set three targets and it’s not gone to plan…
Originally finishing Sky Heart was my main goal for Camp NaNo. I always struggle with writing endings so I knew this wouldn’t be easy.
Kiely was a 2nd viewpoint in an early draft of book 2. In that draft Mariah was the MC but Kiely’s story took over. Then I cut all Kiely’s parts and made a new book in 2018 called Glide. In 2019, it was renamed Diamond in the Sky and I added to it but never finished it.
I opened the manuscript and had no idea what was going on. It has been too long. I’m lost.
Instead of working on the ending, I’ve had to start at the beginning, reading the whole manuscript and making notes. The good thing is I’ve already identified parts to improve which will help when I come to edit. I’m now up to chapter 10.
This book has always taken a back seat to book 1. As book 1 is with my editor I thought I could finally work on finishing this but I was wrong. As you’ll see below, Book 1 has demanded my attention.
Book 2 has been renamed Sky Heart and promptly put back in the back seat… maybe next month Kiely.
I thought sending my novel off to my editor meant my job was done…
No!
Very quickly I realised how much work I have to do to launch my book. As this is a priority, I adjusted my goals to continue working on Ocean Heart.
So far I have:
Still to do:
I’ve now reached chapter 9. My little girl is demanding more attention from me now so I get less time to read on my phone during the day, which is when I read eBooks.
After work I’ve felt too frazzled to do anything but watch rubbish on YouTube – I’m not proud of the time wasted on this.
When I have had energy, I’ve worked on my writing and got so into it that I had to go to bed after, with no time to read.
But, I have made some progress. I’m now up to chapter 19 (I was at chapter 4 at the start of July).
I’ve not even logged in. I’m desperate to make progress on this course but struggling to fit everything in.
I have done some learning as I’ve been researching things like Trim Size and Copyright statements.
But, this course is about successfully publishing your novel and I know it’s full of info that would be useful to me.
So, the next half of the month I’m going to make this a priority (after anything Ocean Heart related) and let go of Sky Heart for now.
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Why you need a developmental editor!
Thank you for agreeing to a Behind the Book interview about your novel What Are Friends For?
This is your first published novel but what’s the first story you remember writing?
If we want to go wayyyyy back, I remember that the first story that I ever wrote was a Gingerbread Man spin-off. We’d just finished the book in my first grade class, but I wanted to read more of the Gingerbread Man’s adventures, so I went home and wrote it!
Why did you decide to self publish?
I tried the querying route, but I quickly found that it wasn’t for me. I spent over a year going back and forth between one publishing company, editing my book, before they ultimately passed on the project. To say I was devastated would be an understatement! I didn’t want to wait any longer, so I decided that I would be self-publishing.
This novel is a Friends to Lovers Romance – I fell in love with my best friend and married him. Have you ever crushed on a friend?
Oh, I love that so much! And I actually haven’t, not anything major anyway. I absolutely love the idea, though—a friendship turning into something romantic is soooo adorable to me!
Can you name any books similar to yours?
Kasie West’s book On the Fence was really similar, and very adorable!
Tell me about a typical day in the life of author Sarah Sutton?
I’m such a homebody. Especially lately. Usually I’ll do professional related things in the morning—like finish some client work, manage the business side of things. I’ll take a nap about mid-day so I can stay up late and write my heart out! Sometimes I won’t go to bed until four in the morning, which makes for a rough wake-up the next day!
Do you have a book boyfriend crush – who is he?
Ooh, ever since I read Clockwork Angel, I have been so in love with William Herondale. Total babe!
Please share a snippet of your story, What Are Friends For?
Elijah was still picking at his fingernails, trying to scrub away the last speck of glitter. It was good that he wasn’t looking at me—he didn’t notice my staring. “You know, Sav agreed to do the double date thing. I texted Jer and he was thinking tomorrow could be a good day. We could all just come over and do some arts and crafts together.”
I was a bottle of mixed emotions; every time someone shook me, a new one surfaced. “This is news to me.”
“I thought Jeremy would’ve called you.”
A part of me really, really wanted to start gushing about Jeremy, but for the wrong reasons. But making Elijah jealous would be impossible. And my soul felt too weary to even try. “I’m sure he’ll mention it tomorrow.”
“Do I have to say again the part where we don’t keep secrets from each other?” Elijah asked, nudging his knee against mine underneath the table.
“We keep secrets,” I corrected him this time, laying my head against my folded arms. I could smell the cleaner Mom used on the wooden surface with my nose so close, and also the lingering smell of glue. “You have yours and I have mine and we don’t talk about them.”
Elijah didn’t answer, at least not right away. From the corner of my vision, through the little sliver open near the crook of my elbow, I saw him pull his chair closer to me. Our knees connected again, but this time he didn’t move his away, allowing it to rest against mine. I felt his fingers walk their way up my skin, a tickle of a touch, barely there.
“You can tell me your secrets if you want to,” he said quietly, his voice soothing and soft near my ear. “I’ll always want to keep them.”
Where can we go to discover more and buy What Are Friends For?
You can buy What Are Friends For? on Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo—here’s a universal link to where all that can be found! https://books2read.com/u/mgGO1v
Redfae Bookshop is my Affiliate Bookshop.org shop link.
[kofi]
If you enjoyed this, you will enjoy:
Behind the Book: Wiccan Romance – Amelia’s Story by Nicola Hebron
Book Review: Wiccan Romance – Amelia’s Story by Nicola Hebron
Book Review: And The Stars Were Burning Brightly by Danielle Jawando
