1,423 words
8 minutes read time

Hello, hello! If you celebrated Halloween, I hope you were safe and had a great time! My sister came over and brought Chinese, and then we walked through a city park that I live close to. I like walking through there because sometimes we’ll see turkeys or deer. We usually carve pumpkins, but my daughter wasn’t into it this year, so we skipped that. We still had a good time, though. November will be packed as it usually is, with my daughter’s birthday, Thanksgiving, and my birthday. This year we also want to go to the new Hunger Games movie, Sunrise on the Reaping, so we’ll be fitting that in sometime as well.

I’ve been busy with making Reels for Instagram, and honestly, between that and trying to get Bitter Love edited for its January 26th release, I’ve been swamped. I used to post only two Reels a day (one for my King’s Crossing serial and one for Wicked Games), but reach has decreased since I started posting in July so now I post two regular Reels, one Trial Reel, and then maybe something in the evening if I have the time to make it and don’t forget to post it. It’s a pain in the ass, but in all my years of publishing, it’s the only thing that has actually sold books. I had minimal success with Facebook ads before they screwed it all up with AI, but I paid for those and only came out even. So there’s a bit of an urgency to keep posting, and posting means making them, even if I end up using snippets and captions that I’ve used before. To get around Instagram’s duplicate content warnings, I change the color highlights on the snippet, sometimes use a new hook, mix up the caption a bit, use new b-roll, and since I can never remember anyway, use new music. That seems to do the trick, but it’s still a lot of work to put them together, even if the snippet is already made.

I don’t want this blog to turn into How Vania Makes Reels™️ (that has a very Debbie Does Dallas ring to it), so I’m not going to say much more except that the pressure to keep something working that actually works is a real thing, and it can mess with your head. If a Reel doesn’t take off, it can be deflating, and I’m trying not to let it get me down when it happens. Not every Reel is going to pop, and I’m fortunate that any of my Reels have done well, considering what I’ve seen online with regard to other authors’ experiences. It’s just very interesting and humbling that the correlation between a viral reel and sales is so stark. I can definitely see how other authors get obsessed with their views.

Anyway, as if I didn’t have enough on my plate, I re-did the cover for Rescue Me. I really liked the old one, and it lasted for four years, but it’s looking dated now. So I took a little time to scroll through background stock photos, since for me, the background is what makes or breaks a cover. I used the same model but he’s wearing a different suit and he’s standing in a different pose. Even though it sucks that I chose a guy who’s done his own version of Debbie Does Dallas on romance novel covers, it’s really nice to find a model who’s in several poses to choose from. It’s handy for graphics and if you ever want to change the cover. Then you can maintain some consistency and your readers aren’t confused if they’re familiar with the book. If you want to read a little bit about my decision on why I changed the cover and the book’s history, you can read it on my author site here: https://vmrheault.com/2026/10/29/going-back-to-rescue-me/

I’m not interested in reading it again–I re-edited it last year–so when the proof comes, I’ll just make sure the cover looks nice in print, that the formatting isn’t wonky, and take a quick peek at my copyright page to make sure everything there is good. I credit the photographers for the stock photos, and I also updated my imprint logo a while back and I needed to update that information as well. I also added Wicked Games to the back matter because Wicked Games and Rescue Me have the same kind of romantic suspense vibe. So there are some changes that I’m going to look over, then I’ll approve it. Once I swap the ebook cover, I want to start making Reels for it. I’ve featured Wicked Games and my King’s Crossing serial the most, and I’d like to mix it up with a different book. Rescue Me fits with what my audience seems to like, and I hope with a new cover I can get it to sell too. If nothing else, it’ll give me a different book to make Reels with. I’m starting to get a little bored using the same scenes over and over again.

I really don’t have too much else. It would have been nice if I was done editing Bitter Love by now, but that’s okay. Listening to it takes a long time, but it’s worth it. And I’d rather put time aside to make Reels than be bitter and complain I’m not selling books. I could very well be at that place again some time in the near future, so I’ll make the compromise. Once I get the book edited, the rest will go fast. I already have the cover done, and Vellum makes it easy to format. I need to write the blurb for it, but that’s really the last thing I’ll need to do that might take some time. I hate writing blurbs, even when I have help.

I’ve been feeling okay physically. Health-wise, I mean. What has remained after my lichen sclerosis diagnosis and treatment and my hysterectomy is a daily discomfort that can feel better or worse depending on what my body decides to do. It doesn’t keep me from doing much, but after my Florida trip, I realized that I’m just happier at home in my pajamas and working on my books. It doesn’t make for a very glamorous life, but the daily grind of working my day job, errands on Wednesdays, and playing taxi driver for my kids doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for much else anyway.

Mental health-wise, I’m doing okay. I still feel a bit lonely in my writing and publishing, especially since Threads seems to be so toxic with so much Amazon and AI hate. It’s particularly depressing and distasteful to see authors posting screenshots of their arguments with Amazon reps over their empty dashboards. I can understand the AI hate, and the number of books I see on the bestseller lists, in Written Word Media promos, and scrolling my Facebook author page feed is disappointing to me too. But screaming at each other isn’t going to do anything. Threads has just turned into not a very nice place and reminds me that it’s not so bad keeping to myself. I’m pretty happy and content with how my life is, especially if I happen to be having a good Reel/sales day, but I love this time of year and SAD hasn’t hit me yet. You’ll have to check back in February when the weather can get me down.

November is my birthday month, so I’ll be celebrating with the new cover I made for Rescue Me and putting my Christmas novel on for free for a few days after Thanksgiving. When I have Bitter Love packaged and ready to go, I’m going to start my hockey standalone that I thought of when all that Alpine Divorce stuff was making its way around Threads. I wanted to write a book with an FMC who goes through that and the ex-hockey player who finds her in the woods. I have it all plotted out and even have a title for it. I’m not sure what the cover will be yet, though. I’ll have to worry about the covers for my Black Ice duet first. Those are still breathing, but they’re both done at 81,000 words. My conveyor belt is still in motion! But my boss keeps giving me extra tasks and I hope I don’t fall behind.

That’s about all I have for this week, and I have no idea what I’m going to write about for next Monday. Anybody have any ideas, give me a holler!

Have a great week, everyone! (And for goodness’ sakes! Go vote!!)