Whirlwind

The last week has been a whirl­wind of writer­ly excite­ment. Sea of Secrets received a thrilling review from Sweet Rock­et’s Miss Ruby Jones, who has now post­ed a love­ly author pro­file about me. Miss Ruby is a gift­ed writer and an expert on the goth­ic romance genre, and I feel tru­ly priv­i­leged that she’s cho­sen to write about me and my nov­el. I’m sure it’s thanks in part to her spir­it­ed cham­pi­oning of Sea of Secrets that it has now risen to #8 in Ama­zon’s goth­ic romance book cat­e­go­ry!

Behind the scenes, I’ve been work­ing on revi­sions to Shad­ow of the Rose. An excit­ing writ­ing work­shop pre­sen­ta­tion by the award-win­ning author Anna DeSte­fano has giv­en me some great insight into how to clar­i­fy and strength­en my char­ac­ters’ emo­tion­al arcs. This should also help me as I out­line book three of the Ash Grove tril­o­gy, which will take place in mul­ti­ple real­i­ties and will thus need all the clar­i­ty I can bring to it!

In the wider world of writ­ing, there’s an excit­ing new devel­op­ment in self-pub­lish­ing, as a num­ber of estab­lished romance writ­ers have joined up to cre­ate a brand that guar­an­tees qual­i­ty. As read­ers are faced with ever more choic­es, it’s a great idea to find a way to set one­self apart. (On a fun side note, the top cov­er image shown in that arti­cle is by Hot Damn Designs, who cre­at­ed the gor­geous cov­er for Sea of Secrets. And if you like my cov­er, make sure to check out my Face­book author page to learn how to vote for it!)

I’ve just about used up my quo­ta of excla­ma­tion points, but it’s been that great a week. Please check out the won­der­ful posts by Miss Ruby–and share them with your book-lov­ing friends!