Speechless!

Sales on Bourne to Love Emma lagged after a couple of weeks post-release.  I was hopeful that it would sell more after I released Fighting for Heather.  While working on some things right after FfH released last week, I thought about the KDP promotional opportunities.  I can't do a Kindle Countdown Deal because the book must be priced over $2.99 regularly and mine aren't.  But - BUT - I have the option to make a book free for five days or less during any 90 day period on KDP Select.

I thought it might encourage people to read the first book and maybe buy the second one....

When I first looked at the sales numbers yesterday, a little over a hundred copies had been given away.  That's well over the number I've sold on my best day.

By mid-afternoon, over three hundred copies had been given away.  By dinner, that number was over 450.

The final number for the first day it was offered for free:  FIVE HUNDRED SEVENTY ONE.

Holy crap.

Obviously, the down side of all of that is that I make nothing off of giving books away for free.  The up side:  visibility, name recognition, repeat business if they enjoyed it....

I am keeping this in mind as I work on my next book.  Perhaps Fighting for Heather will be free for a couple of days around the release of the third book in the series.

I never imagined that many people reading my first book.  Wow!

FREE books!

To celebrate the release of Fighting for Heather this week, I thought I should encourage other people to pick up the first book in the series, too.

So.

Friday (12/4/2015) through Sunday (12/6/15), Bourne to Love Emma will be FREE on Amazon!

Click here to get your copy today!

Happy Reading!

MKP

Nail biting... and Teaser Tuesday

It's so exciting when the book goes live and you actually see it on Amazon and you can look at a report that shows it's been purchased.  It's this kind of incredibly surreal moment - something I wrote about people who only existed in my head is now being seen by other people.  Insane!

Then there's the days that follow.  The worry that people won't like what they read.  The wondering if  you should have rewritten more of the book - if the characters should have met differently or if you didn't spend enough time making them three-dimensional.

I got a new 5 star review for Bourne to Love Emma this morning and the reviewer was so excited to find out that Fighting for Heather had just been released....  The two books are so different - at least as far as what the main characters want and the obstacles they have to face.  If someone loved one, will they love the other?  Did I push Heather and John's characters too far outside the 'norm' for contemporary romance?

Argh.  I think I need to unplug for the rest of today.  I have a story in my head that needs to be written and I can't focus on it when I find myself wandering through Amazon and Goodreads and Facebook.  :p

Time to get back to adulting!

Here's the teaser I posted this morning for anyone not following me somewhere else:

Fighting for Heather is LIVE!

Now available for purchase for $0.99 and Kindle Unlimited subscribers can read for FREE!

http://tinyurl.com/p3vuety

Enjoy!

24 Hours!

Final edits have been reviewed and changes have been made to Fighting for Heather.

I was unexpectedly lucky to have a new beta reader who had personal experience that shined a light on some moments in the book that might have been worse had they not been adjusted before publishing.  I am so thankful for that!  I have loved getting to know Heather and John and I want people who read their story to love them, too.

When I was in the last days of writing Bourne to Love Emma, I had a decent outline of how Fighting for Heather would go.  Heather and John had a completely different plan for their book and the outline was scrapped early on.  As a new writer, that possibility never occurred to me and I still struggle knowing how to deal with the feeling that my own plan for my book isn't working and having to throw out my plans and start over.  It's a lot like I imagine having multiple-personalities may feel - this is my book but I can't write it the way I wanted!  Very strange!

As an aside - and perhaps an apology - I hadn't planned on writing Heather and John's story.  As Heather became a more central character in the first book, I started to realize she needed her own story.  Unfortunately, Bourne to Love Emma was nearly finished and it was published as the first book in the R.E.D. Operatives series.  For that reason - because I didn't have a plan in place when I started writing it - the majority of Fighting for Heather occurs in the past, before Emma's story takes place.

I hope that won't frustrate you as a reader!

The book is in review on Amazon right now and should be available to purchase - $0.99 or FREE on Kindle Unlimited - sometime tomorrow!

I hope you love reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

THE END

Those are the two words I just typed in Fighting for Heather.  Two little words - six letters separated by a space - that evoke such emotion!

I'm happy to be done with that book.  I'm a little sad that John and Heather didn't get an 'epic' novel - that I couldn't spend more time in the in-between time with them.  They were such special people and I've gotten used to them living in my head lately.  I'm excited and nervous and a little sick at my stomach while I wait for my alpha readers to make their way through the first draft.  I'm exhausted - my Fitbit has informed me that I have not hit my sleep goal in over a month (which is basically how long this book has been dragging me along) so I'm hoping to actually hit seven hours tonight since I'm not the one cooking the turkey tomorrow.

I'm taking tomorrow off.  Maybe not TOTALLY off since NaNoWriMo is still going on - I promised myself I'd meet or beat my goal every day this month, so that should include tomorrow.

Friday, I'm hoping the first round of edits will begin.  Lots of wine, people, lots of wine.  In reality, it will probably be beer.  Don't judge me.

If things go my way and there isn't anything terrifyingly broken in the book, betas might have it in their inboxes before the month is over.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thank you and good night!

Cover Reveal!

I am in the final stages of Fighting for Heather and it will be ready for editing in the next few days. This book tested me!  Heather and John feel like parts of me now and I will be sad to let them go.

I promised a look at the cover when I posted about the new cover I put on Bourne to Love Emma.

Here you go!

Happy Monday!
MKP

Bourne to Love Emma has a new cover!

While working on Fighting for Heather this weekend, I started drafting the cover for it.  I couldn't find a way to make it work so that it would tie in with what I did with Bourne to Love Emma's.

So I changed it.

This is the new cover that should go live in the next day or two.

What do you think?

Sometime this week, I'll share the cover to Fighting for Heather.

Have a great week!  Mine will be filled with finishing this book so I can get it out for editing and reviews before publishing.  Wish me luck!

Fighting for Heather - R.E.D. Operatives, Book 2

Fighting for Heather is coming along.  NaNoWriMo has been helpful in pushing my daily writing output.  I am optimistic that the book will be complete and published by the end of the month.  If at all possible, I will try to make it happen before Thanksgiving.

Heather and John have not been as cooperative as Jason and Emma were.  Their story has not followed the path I predicted and it has taken more time for me to discover how the book is supposed to be written instead of how I started planning for it to happen.

Thanks for bearing with me!

There should be perks...

For anyone who actually enjoyed Bourne to Love Emma enough to follow me while I work on other books, there should be perks of some kind, right?  Right!

Today, I offer you one of my favorite scenes from the first half of Fighting for Heather:

I gasped as his tongue thrust between my lips and possessed my mouth.  He stroked his tongue over mine, circling it and sucking it into his mouth as he rocked his hips against me.  I slid my arms around his back and pressed myself against him.  His teeth scraped over my bottom lip and I moaned into his mouth.

His right hand gripped my waist, just above the top of my jeans, his thumb stroking under the edge of my shirt.  I arched into him, rubbing my breasts against his chest, pressing my belly harder against the hardest part of him.

He pulled back from the kiss, burying his face in the side of my neck and releasing my hair.  His hands slid down my back and stopped just short of grabbing my ass.  I turned my face just a tiny bit into the side of his neck and took a quiet sniff.  God, he smelled good.  Something sharp and clean mixed with the heat of a man…. 

He took a small step back and slid his hands back to my waist.  I tucked my fingers just barely into his front pockets…to keep him close.

“My name’s John Winters.”

“Heather Jackson.”  I worked really hard to keep a smile off my face.  Introductions probably should have happened before his tongue was in my mouth.

“I’ve wanted to do that since the first time I saw you,” he said, rubbing his thumbs in small thought-scattering circles on my belly. 

“I’ve wanted you to do that since the first time you saw me.”  I leaned up on my toes and pulled him toward me for another kiss.  He kissed me gently but pulled back when I would have deepened the kiss.

“Heather.  I want to take you to dinner.”

“John.  I don’t need dinner.  I just need you….”  I leaned up again, but this time he used his hands on my waist to keep me from reaching him.  To say I was confused was one hell of an understatement.

“I want to take you on a date – buy you dinner.”

“You don’t have to do that –.”  His hands cupped my face and he pressed his fingers to my lips.

“I want to do it.  I want to spend time with you, get to know you…find out what makes you tick.”  He cocked his head to the side just a little in the most endearing way.  And that made my heart speed up in a dangerous way.  Warning bells were ringing.  He slid his hand to my cheek so I could answer him.

I shook my head.  “I don’t do dates.  I don’t do ‘getting to know you’ or relationships….” 

His eyes were dark and serious as they stroked over every part of my face before settling on my eyes.  

He nodded his head.  “I understand.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.  I used to be that way, too.  Not worth the risk, right?  The thing is…there’s risk no matter what.  So much risk.  Why not take that risk with someone who’s actually worth it instead of some faceless, mindless fuck?”

I just stared at him, my brain trying to figure out exactly what he was trying to say.  He ran his fingers down my cheek, leaned down and kissed me softly on the lips.

“Don’t misunderstand me, Heather.  I want a whole lot more than dinner.  I want your mouth on me, I want to watch your eyes dilate and darken when I sink all the way into you the first time, I want to fuck you so hard you can’t walk straight.”  He paused, his fingertips stroking down my throat to where my pulse was pounding at the base of my neck.  “But I want to know you when I do all of that.”

He kissed me again.  “Just…think about it.  I’ll see you soon.”  He turned and walked out of the hallway and out of the bar.

What the hell just happened?

~~Fighting for Heather~~  MKP (c) 2015

Making this part of a series will be so much easier...NOT!

When I started Bourne to Love Emma, it wasn't intended to be a series.  As I got about halfway through the book, I had invested time and thought and love into secondary characters and realized I had the ability to use the security company - R.E.D. - as a platform to make the book part of a series.

Sounds simple, right?  I mean, I already created characters with backgrounds and physical traits and histories with other characters - that should make it easy to move from one book to the next and write!

Nope.

Nope.  Nope.  Nope.

If I wasn't almost halfway through the second book, I'd chuck the idea out the window and start over on a book with no ties to something I have already written.

As a writer, I already spend hours and hours each week researching some of the most ridiculous stuff -- names of places and people to make sure I'm not pulling reality into my fiction; specifics for something my character knows all about but I do not; military terminology and tactics, specifics about how each branch operates and how the characters specialty played a part; etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseum.

TO THIS, a series adds fact checking against your own writing!  How old was XYZ in my last book?  What season was it when ABC happened?  Which character went on what mission last time?  Who got hurt?  How many floors did I say were in that building?  Did he drive a truck or an SUV?

For real.

AND - that doesn't even begin to touch on the "which person will be in the next book and how does the hot mess happening in THIS book affect the story of THAT one?"

I'm exhausted just living in my own head today!

I should really count the words in this post and count them toward my NaNoWriMo goal...but I won't because I'm strictly using those words toward completing Fighting for Heather.  If my brain can catch up with the goals of John and Heather, I'm hoping to have that finished before Thanksgiving.  Finished is possible - edited and published...maybe not so much.

Back to it!  Happy Saturday!

Boom!

The very idea of starting a blog when I'm in the middle of writing a novel AND participating in NaNoWriMo is ludicrous...and yet.  Here I am!  Ha!

No one is following me.  No one knows about this at all.  To anyone else, that might make me sound like I'm basically sitting here talking to myself...writing to myself.  But that's pretty much what I do all day, anyway.  I write for myself.

I've seen other authors say these things, so I refuse to feel crazy when I am honest:  I have characters in my head.  When I write, they take over and the story is all about them and how they direct it.  I'm serious.

Writing my first published novel, I sat down and wrote out my outline.  I detailed how they'd meet, what would happen, where the drama would come from, how it would end.  IT.  DIDN'T.  WORK.  THAT.  WAY.

My outline strongly resembles the book, but it certainly didn't do what I expected inasmuch as directing the writing.  I took out entire chapters and reworked them when it just didn't feel right.

Guess what else I have discovered?  Heather - the female main character's best friend - was just a supporting character...until she wasn't.  What SUCKS is that her book should have come first.  But I didn't know that when I wrote Bourne to Love Emma.  So.  I am contemplating making BtLE book 2 in the series even though it was published as book 1.  I have no idea how that will screw up the people who have already read it, though.

Things to contemplate while I finish telling Heather's story!