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Rival Demons News and The Beach

Woohoo! I’m doing a dance over here, because I just finished my rough draft for RIVAL DEMONS! Yay!!! I can’t believe it’s finished! It feels so amazing to have the rough draft of my fifth book completed just shy of one year since I started the first book in the series! Wow, it’s amazing how much things have changed for me in this past year. So what’s next? Ah, the rewrites begin! For me, a rough draft is more of an exploration of where the story wants to go. I rarely use very much of it in the final book,…

August Sales Numbers

Wow, so they weren’t kidding about a summer slump. My sales definitely slowed down in the month of August, and it was scary! Overall, I had a good monthly total simply because I now have four books out instead of 3. On the other hand, each book’s individual sales were the lowest they’ve been since February, which is disappointing. That’s one of the hardest parts about self-publishing. It’s a lot of ups and downs and you never truly know what to expect from month to month. The only true way to guarantee growth is to keep writing books. August Sales…

Exciting News!

There are several things I wanted to announce today.First of all, I am almost finished with the rough draft of Book 5! This is, actually, why I’ve come to a very big decision about the series that I sincerely hope you will be excited about. When I first started writing the Peachville High Demons series, I thought it would be a trilogy. Possibly four books at most. Then, in the middle of writing the rough draft for Book 3, I realized the story was much bigger than I ever imagined. The series grew to 5 books. Now that I’m almost…

Back of the Book Reviews September Extravaganza

Today starts the month-long read-a-thon and September Extravaganza over at Back of the Book Reviews!! This month will be full of exciting author interviews and amazing giveaways! They are having daily giveaways as well as one big grand prize giveaway at the end of the month that will include one of the very first free signed print copies of my book, BEAUTIFUL DEMONS. They also have put together an amazing September Extravaganza Programme that has all kinds of awesome discounts, coupons and free book download codes. The programme is 49 pages long and includes exclusive interviews, featured authors, a full list…

The Word Count Issue

In the traditional publishing world, word count for young adult novels is all over the place. The Twilight Saga books are each over 100,000 words. Books like Kate Brian’s Private series are more around the 65,000-75,000 word count. Most websites and agents place a typical YA manuscript between 45,000-80,000 words. Here is what Agent Colleen Lindsay says about YA: YA fiction = For mainstream YA, anywhere from about 45k to 80k; paranormal YA or YA fantasy can occasionally run as high as 120k but editors would prefer to see them stay below 100k. The second or third in a particularly…

My Write-a-palooza Rewards!

I had a fun shopping day today at the Sanrio store in the Crabtree Valley Mall here in Raleigh! I spent almost exactly $84, lol, so there will be no HK collectipaks for me, but that’s okay. I’m super excited about what I bought!! Here’s a pic of my swag: I bought one of the new Hello Kitty canvas tote bags. It’s big enough to put my netbook in and some folders and pens, but it also fits over my shoulder, which is nice. I also got that cute HK t-shirt, three buttons (that I’ll probably put on my shoulder…