This will be one of the last blog posts I’m going to write about this series, unless I update you with sales or if any of my advertising stuff works exceptionally well.

I published book one, His Frozen Heart, yesterday, quietly, and without a lot of fanfare. I posted it on Instagram and that was about it.  I put book two up on preorder, and put the preorder link in the back of book one.

That was one thing I wanted to change this time–optimize my back matter. I’ll link up the other books when the preorders go live, and that will be that. I also blatantly asked for reviews at the end of the books. If I’m not mistaken, though, if you read on a Kindle, Amazon will prompt you to leave a review when you’re done. I don’t read on my Kindle very often because I prefer a paperback, but that helps authors, too.

Going back to fix back matter was kind of a pain in the butt, but if it helps readers find the next book without much work, then I’m all for that. We’ll see if it works.

It’s a bittersweet moment. I started this series in December of 2018 and spent all of 2019 writing them. Almost a year to the day, I completed the four books. I worked on them through one of the crappiest winters we’ve ever had, my carpal tunnel surgery, the adoption of a kitten who turned out to be pretty sick. My other female cat (Harley) didn’t take to her, and it caused her to have stress bladder issues that resulted in surgery. 2019 was a long year, but having my writing made a difference.

2020 has been exceptionally better already, and I’m almost done with a new trilogy writing in first person present. It’s a little different from the 3rd person past stuff that I’ve been writing, and honestly, I can’t say which I like better.  Both have their own challenges, but I have to admit, writing first person present is a lot faster for me for some reason.

Anyway, I kind of missed the boat with the wedding series. They take place in Minnesota in the winter, and the bride featured is having a Christmas-themed ceremony. That might make marketing these a little difficult since everyone now is hoping Punxsutawney Phil is right and we’ll have an early spring. I’ll just have to remember to market these as a Christmas in July thing, and in October when all the holiday books start coming out.

But that doesn’t mean I won’t market these at all. Once they’re all available, I’ll push some ads at them, and hopefully a reader will tear through them in KU.

What did I learn putting these out?

1. Doing the covers drove me crazy. One hour of looking at stock photos is equal to about a million hours in hell. I played with a few concepts before deciding on the winter scene at the bottom and the couple at the top. There’s no set way small town romance looks, so I was on my own when it came to fitting in. My books are starting to blend together . . . my trilogy looks similar to these . . . but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If your books can possess the same qualities, readers will start to associate the covers with you. A good brand will tell readers they’re your books without even seeing your name on the cover.
2. I need to get my attention span under control, or I’ll never like writing series. I struggled writing the fourth book. I had already started writing Zane and Stella. That plot kind of plopped into my lap (don’t you love it when that happens?) and I didn’t want to lose the spark. Toward the end of book 4 I had to force myself to finish it, and it was difficult not lose enthusiasm for the series.
3. Don’t promise something if you won’t deliver. I thought it was a GREAT idea to add some of Autumn’s blog posts to the end of book four. She’s a reporter and blogger for the Rocky Point Daily Journal. I wanted to add some extra content, and I thought that was a great way to go about it. I should have written them while I was writing the books, but I didn’t. So I had blog post promises to fulfill, and my heart wasn’t in it anymore. I did about 10 posts that I published in the back of book four, and I think they turned out well. But truthfully, if hadn’t bleated about it, I probably wouldn’t have written them. It held me accountable though, so maybe in the long run it wasn’t a bad thing. Or maybe they’ll go unappreciated anyway. You never know.
4. Trust my abilities. It would have been nice to put these out as I had written them, but I didn’t trust myself not to have inconsistencies from book to book. Eventually I’ll be able to put them out as I write them. I’ll need to if I ever want to write more than 4 books in a series. Saving them up made it so I only published one book in 2019, The Years Between Us. And I only published that in May of 2019 because I held onto it. I could have published it long before that.

I guess that’s my wrap-up for this series! I’ll give you advertising updates as I do them, but it’s a relief to move on to something else.

If you’re interested in checking out His Frozen Heart, you can grab it here. This is the link for Kindle, but it’s available in paperback, too. I contacted Amazon to link them up, but it can take a day or so for that to reflect on Amazon.

Have you put out a series? Anything you’d like to share about making things easier? Let me know! Thanks for reading!