Author Update: King’s Crossing Series

Posted on April 29, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

city skyline at night. text reads: king's crossing update

I’ve talked a lot about this series, and if you’re tired of reading about it, feel free to skip this post. One day soon these books will be released into the wild and I’ll stop talking about them. 🙂 Until then, this blog may be a bit repetitive as not much is going on, but I’ll try to come up with something better next week. If you have a topic you want me to write about, let me know in the comments. Thanks!

I don’t have much to share with you this week. I’m trying like mad to get these books read, and reading them over was again, so worth it. I don’t have an editing process–it seems to vary from book to book. I barely edited A Heartache for Christmas, listening to it, and proofing the proof after writing it and perhaps going through it once or twice. That’s still four sweeps, by me and me alone. I know I should get other eyes on my work, but there are just so many scammers charging for a service they have no right saying they can provide and the ones whom you could probably trust, well, they just cost too much. I’m not at a point where I would earn back a 700 dollar copy edit, and there’s no point apologizing for it, that’s just the way it is. But I’ve been sitting on this series for a long time, and every time I read it, I find other things to change, small discrepancies that probably a reader might not notice, but I did, and I like past and future details to mesh as much as possible. So, I don’t regret this read through, but besides looking for typos in the printed proofs, it will be the last one. That’s not to say I won’t fix a mistake if I find one. When I was reading the proof of A Heartache for Christmas, I found a timeline issue that I had to fix, but I published that book knowing I did the very best I could and that’s all anyone can do, whether you pay for an editor or not. What I would like is to find a person like me who can do all the things and I could give her a hundred dollars. That probably won’t happen–no one does the amount of work I do for my friends for so little, but it would be nice to have a dev editor, copy editor, and proofer all rolled into one who would catch say, 80% of my mistakes. Though, to be fair, I wrote so many books during the pandemic I wouldn’t use a person that way even if I could. That’s a lot of work for not a lot of pay, and I would feel terrible even if she were willing to do it.

So, sitting on these books was worth it, but this last editing pass before I format and order the proofs will have to be enough. At some point, you have to move forward, and while I liken several editing passes as folding more ingredients into cake batter as you mix, eventually you want to bake the batter and eat the cake.

I’m going to be moving on to researching how to market these. This series will probably be the only one like this that I do, where there is only one entry point–book one–and books one, two, four, and five all have medium to hard cliffhangers. The last thing I need is to be accused of money grabbing or get poor reviews because readers didn’t know the books ended on a cliffhanger and they hate them. Cliffhangers, I mean. So for right now the plan is to use the blurbs to put that information at the bottom and to create A+ content that will also have that information listed as well as the release dates of the other books. I’m a reader who doesn’t like to read a series unless all the books are out, and I know others are the same. I may not get a lot of sales and KU page reads until all the books are live, and that’s okay, that’s what I expect anytime I release a trilogy which is why I dump them all in the same month. Someone on Threads I think it was, or maybe it was a while back in one of my Facebook groups, said when you do that, you waste the 30, 60, and 90 day push Amazon gives you, and that may be true, but I think I’m willing to give that up in exchange for quicker read through. My sales are slow enough that I can see that people do buy all three books in a trilogy at the same time, or do read through them all one right after the next in KU. You would have to decide if Amazon’s push of your new release is worth it, or if you would prefer getting read through right away.

I can’t release all six books at once, or even a month a part, as I need the time to write more books, so I’m going to release them two months apart, though the ebooks will be on preorder which means book 6 will be on preorder for a whole year. That’s not something I usually do, but I want readers to see the series is done, and I can add that information in my A+ content as well.

The other thing that I’m going to do that I don’t usually do is put my books on sale during the preorder phase. I’m going to mark book one at .99, book two at 1.99, book three at 2.99, and the other three books will be regular price, which right now is 4.99. I normally don’t care about preorders because readers who buy books and readers who borrow them in KU are two separate audiences, and I market to my readers in KU, but I’ve never written a six book series before and I know how expensive buying an entire series can be if people want them. I don’t think I’ll get any paperback sales because I’m going to have to put them at 14.99, maybe even 15.99 to cover printing costs and I don’t have to do the math to guess readers don’t have 100 bucks to spend on an author they might never have heard of. Still, I like to offer paperbacks because besides the cost of the ISBN numbers, there’s not a lot of money or time involved so I figure I might as well.

The second I proof the final proof and make any corrections, they’ll go up on Bookfunnel for ARCs. The ARC discussion over on Threads a couple weeks ago made me want to vomit, and I will NOT be treating my reviewers and readers the way I’ve seen some authors treat theirs (such as blaming them if their books end up on pirate sites. That happens to everyone and there’s no one to blame). It was gross, and I should have made a list of all the authors I will never ever buy books from. I’ll put my ARCs on my website, let my subscribers know they’re available, maybe throw a little cash at an ad to build buzz and put them on Booksprout. I need to do that a month in advance to give readers time to read the first book at least, so it will be a lot of work and keeping an eye on the calendar because the ARC links need to come down as my books release and drop into KU. It will be a busy 12 months, and I’m also excited to get these out and work on something fresh.

I keep changing my mind on what that will be–pulled between writing something new and jumping into editing the books I have left on my laptop. I have one standalone I could polish and release, and two books of that other series that I decided I would cut down from six to four. I’m not sure, though cleaning up that standalone sounds appealing because it would be easy, but so does writing a new standalone that I partially have plotted out, but would be a bit more work.

In other news, I started a new blog to talk about coping with my health condition. Since this wasn’t a great place for it and I don’t want to make anyone tired of reading this blog if my topics don’t stay on topic. I started it over on Blogger, just so I wouldn’t confuse myself with another blog on WordPress. I already have two and using a different platform felt right. I’m not going to post on a schedule the way I do here, use it more for an online journal to talk about how I’m feeling. It will just be a place to blow off stream, and you can read it here if you want: chaoscoffeeandconfessions.blogspot.com. It only has one entry so far, and I can only post when I’m not working on something else, which won’t be often until after my series is done.

If you want to read more about marketing a series look here:

https://www.ingramspark.com/blog/marketing-a-book-series-the-power-of-readthrough

https://www.blog.yourfirst10kreaders.com/how_to_write_and_market_your_book_series/

https://insights.bookbub.com/promoting-series-keep-readers-hooked/

A discussion about cliffhangers…..https://mdmassey.com/cliffhanger-endings-writers/

That’s about all I have for this week, and I apologize if it’s repetitive. This series has been my life for a long time, and no one will be happier that I’m done than me.

Have a good week, everyone, and I hope the sun is shining where you are!

Monday Author Update: Sweet Nothings.

Posted on February 5, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

Happy Monday! Well, I hope it’s happy for you, but if you’re not a full-time author, by the time you read this, you’ve probably guzzled a gallon of coffee and you’re sitting behind your desk at work wondering why you haven’t won the lottery. I know, I’m such a downer, but that’s life. I was scrolling Facebook yesterday and bumped into this motivational piece of perfection….

I don’t know why stupid stuff like that makes me laugh, but it does.

Anyway, not much on my plate this week besides going to Rochester, MN on Tuesday for my Mayo Clinic visit that’s scheduled on Wednesday afternoon. I’m fortunate we’re having a mild winter and I don’t have to worry about blizzards. Over the past three years I’ve talked a lot about how icky I feel, and I’m trying not to get my hopes up. This is an old subject, so I won’t waste any more time on it. I’ll be sure to update you next week, though, and hopefully I’ll have some good news to share.

I’m proud of myself and I’ve been doing the prompts that I made up for the February social media content calendar I shared with you last week. I don’t mind talking about myself, but I was at a loss of how to do it. The prompts help, and I’ll schedule posts for when I’m gone. The Canva scheduler makes that easy and I post to my FB author page and to my IG page. The algos don’t know who I am so I don’t get many likes or comments, but if I can teach them to know who I am (again), maybe that will change and I can start building my following (again).

Here it is if you missed it last week. It’s never too late to start posting.

I’m more than halfway done editing book 4 in my series. It’s slow going, taking out all the whens, whiles, and withs and some becauses. I definitely took the easy way out when I wrote these, and I’m still layering in feelings, emotions, and descriptions into the scenes. This book isn’t too bad. I’ve only added 1,000 words so far and I have 4 chapters left. I won’t get it done before my trip, as rewriting takes a long time, but I’m hoping to get all of them done by the end of March. I still have to do covers, and I wish I could afford to source my stock from a site that wasn’t DepositPhotos. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there and right now, I’m at their mercy. I think I’ve got the template ready to go–the backgrounds and possibly the title font (though I’m always on the lookout for beautiful font duets). I’m keeping the series logo I made for the other covers. There’s nothing wrong with it. Will these be the books where I start chopping heads off? Stay tuned.

I’m thisclose to joining Threads. I vowed I wouldn’t add another platform to my social media, but I see teaser posts on IG and FB enticing me to join. I’ve exceeded my limits of clicking and reading without having a profile. It’s not because I want to promote my books–IG and my FB author pages are enough for that. No, the posts Zuck’s been teasing me with are what I’ve been missing since Twitter went to the way of X. I need a place for book news. Facebook and the author groups I’ve joined fill in a lot of that, but I had to leave 20booksto50k for ethical reasons, and I left the Self Publishing Formula group that’s hosted by Mark Dawson after all that plagiarizing stuff came out. Losing those two groups hasn’t been a big deal, but I’m seeing that BookThreads could be what I need to fill in the gap. Twitter hasn’t been the same, and I got treated to more BS the other day when someone was commenting on this article:

https://www.theverge.com/c/23194235/ai-fiction-writing-amazon-kindle-sudowrite-jasper

They talk about about authors using AI to get ahead, write faster, crank out more content. I’ve often referred to self-publishing as a hamster wheel, that little furry guy running faster and faster but not getting anywhere. The industry is full of books and when you release a book that sinks the second you hit Publish, it can feel like you do a lot of work for nothing.

I keep my mouth shut a lot of the time now. I’m not popular on Twitter, my views are not well-received, much like Joanna Penn who said in the article she had to step away because she’s an AI cheerleader and she got a lot of pushback for that. I am not an AI cheerleader, but I feel out of place all the same.

I really do just want to make one thing clear–I do not blame Amazon (KDP) for the grind self-publishing had turned it. I’m not denying at all that it’s common, COMMON, for authors to publish 4-6 books a year. And not novellas, either. Full-length books. It’s common. But it’s the KNOWLEDGE that it’s common that can eat at you. You know authors are doing something you can’t. I can’t publish four books a year. Not without writing them and saving them up. Writing, editing, cover design, proofing the proof, it all takes too long. Especially if you’re dealing with a series. Especially if you want to publish something that’s got some quality to it. It’s not easy writing a book full of twists. Half the reason I sat on my series for so long is that I have 540,000 words of an intricate plot that I needed desperately to make sure held together. Only time away could give me that clarity, and it has proven to be valuable so far.

The woman featured in the article turned to AI for help. She’s living off her book money and that in itself, I’m sure, is stressful. I’m at the point where I don’t think I’ll ever be able to quit my day job, and that’s okay, but trying to find time to write after working 40 hours a week is stressful in its own way. I’m not not blaming this woman for letting AI write part of her books, that’s her choice, but the WHY she did it I don’t agree with. She said her readers would drop her if they had to wait too long between books, and I think that is complete BS. Okay, maybe not complete because I do think you need to have consistency when publishing. Even if you train your readers to only expect one book a year. Publishing is the fastest moving sloth there is, and yeah, you’re going to have your work cut out for you if you’re writing a series and need five years between books. That’s why I write my series before I publish them. People binge now, and I just go with it. But rather than turn to Al for help, there are things you can do.

Keep your readers informed. Start a newsletter or post consistently on social media. If you let your readers know what you’re doing, what you’re working on, and when the next book will come out, they will wait for you. Build a connection with your readers. Care about them, and they will care about you.

Recommend other books. Listen, when I was reading that article, I felt her desperation, but in the end you are not going to be the only author a reader reads. It’s impossible. Romance whale readers can read a book a day. There’s no humanly possible way to keep up with that pace. Instead of being scared of being replaced, embrace the idea that books are a community and you are only a piece of it. Recommend other books–you should be reading them anyway–but that’s why it’s important to create a niche. On my V’s Vixens FB page, I post books that are free and in KU and pull quotes from books that are similar to mine. I’m building a readership of the kinds of books I write. If you’re all over the map, your readers won’t know what to read. They read YOU and want to read books that are similar to yours. Make it easy for them. Recommend books that you like so when your next book is ready to go they know exactly what they’ll be getting.

Relax, but not too much. I like rules, and if you’ve read my blog for a while, you know I do. Stick to one genre, know reader expectations. Cover your book to market. Learn an ad platform. But the one rule I have never ever agreed with is to write every day. For some people it’s not possible, and beating yourself up over it won’t make things better. If you can’t write, you can’t. Thinking is writing. Plotting is writing. Sorting through stock photos is, maybe not writing, but you get the idea. Don’t lose your joy, or like woman in the article, writing will be come work and not the good kind. She said after she started using AI for a prolonged time, she didn’t feel connected to her characters anymore, would lose the theme of her books. She didn’t wake up thinking about her characters, she didn’t go to bed and they were the lost thought in her mind before she drifted off. You know what? When characters claw at you from the inside out, that is the best part of writing. When your characters need their story told so badly they don’t let you go. I felt sorry for her when I read that. If you lose your joy, there’s not much to write for anymore.

I didn’t get into with that guy, though he spouted off a few more things about how evil KDP is and how there isn’t an alternative to publishing. Maybe KDP has the biggest slice of the pie, but they gave us the pie. I truly think Amazon gave us opportunities when we wouldn’t have had them otherwise.

That is all I have for this post. I hope you all have a wonderful week ahead, and if you have time, sign up for ProWritingAid’s Romance Week. I always sign up but never watch anything. I still have all the 20booksto50k videos from their November conference. Plus two of Alex Newton’s K-lytics reports. But if you’re interested here’s a non-affiliate link to sign up. https://prowritingaid.com/romance-week/sign-up

Until next time!

Monday Author Update: Newsletter/Email Guidelines

Posted on January 15, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

Last week was not the greatest week I’ve ever had, but as they say, things could always be worse, and since things have smoothed out a little I’ll agree . . . for now. Let me get the “real” issues out of the way first and then I can tell you about a few personal things that haven’t exactly gone my way either.

Newsletter/Email Authentication and adding SPF and DKIM records
I’m subscribed to Holly Darling’s newsletter and she’s an expert in email marketing. I bought her MailerLite tutorial a couple of years go during a Black Friday sale. I haven’t gotten around to watching it *wincing* and with the migration I completed a few weeks ago maybe it won’t help me much now anyway, but it signed me up to her newsletter. In it, she outlined what you need to do to so Gmail and Yahoo will keep delivering your newsletter to your subscribers who use them as their email service provider. Luckily, she also has a blog, and you can read the article here:

https://pages.hollydarlinghq.com/posts/what-the-heck-is-a-dmarc-and-why-you-should-care-1

I knew changes were coming, but I didn’t realize they would be coming quite so soon. Most of these changes need to be completed by February 2024 (which is poor timing if you wanted to migrate to the new MailerLite because you also have to do that by the first of February), and I do not like waiting to do things until the last minute. That just begs for things to go wrong with no time to fix it–and I had plenty go wrong.

Way back when I started blogging, I let WordPress handle my hosting even though I was warned my site wouldn’t have all the bells and whistles that it could have if I found a different host. I didn’t want to mess with GoDaddy, Bluehost, GatorHost, SiteGround or anything else and didn’t need anything fancy. I didn’t start blogging to sell books–thank goodness too, because this blog does not sell books, and that’s fine. People who read this blog want to sell their own books, and I’m happy to help if I can. So, I was a little concerned when all this news started circulating that I was going to have to authenticate my newsletter account. I wasn’t sure if I even could with WordPress, but fortunately, the answer is yes.

I decided to start a newsletter last summer, no, was the summer of 2022 since 2023 is gone now. The first thing I did was pay for an email address linked to my website. Even back then people said not to use a regular email account, and I paid for a G-Suite account. You can email me at vania@vaniamargene.com if you want. I’ll get it eventually (my apologies to Debbie who wrote me some really nice things about A Heartache for Christmas that sat in my spam folder for two weeks). WordPress made that easy to do as well, and I pay $72 dollars a year for it. I looked up all my renewal notices and I pay $187.00 a year to WordPress for this site ($96 for the Explorer plan, $72 for the G-Suite account, and $19 for my domain name), and $66 dollars for my vmrheault.com author site ($48 for the personal plan and $18 for my domain name). It’s no wonder I’ve barely been breaking even doing this author thing. I pay WordPress a decent chunk of change, but websites are necessary and the email I set up to go with my newsletter is a must (and it will be for everyone after February 1). I thought I would have some trouble because I decided to write under a pen name, but I’m not hiding who I am and even give my first name in my welcome letter, so it’s not a big deal my newsletter shows they come from vaniamargene.com. I only set up a separate author website because my 1st person books are very different than my 3rd person books and I don’t promote the books I was writing under my full name . . . though I probably still should.

Anyway, long story not-so-short, I thought I was in for some trouble, but if you also host with WordPress because you were as confused as I was, don’t worry. I can show you were to go.

Click on your profile name:

You’ll get a new menu. Click on manage domains or it might say just one domain. I have two, as I just stated above.

Click on the one you want:

Scroll down to DNS records. Click it to make it expand then click Manage.

This is where you go to enter the information that your newsletter aggregator will give you. Click add a record and that opens up a new menu where you can chose the type and that will allow you to enter the name and value. I honestly don’t want to go any further than that to capture screenshots because when I was adding the information MailerLite was telling me to enter, I messed something up and took my whole site down for over 24 hours and didn’t even realize it. I was really lucky that WordPress’s chat was available and a Happiness Engineer knew exactly what I did wrong and helped me fix it in only 10 minutes, but I missed out on over 200 hits while it was down. I apologize to anyone who was trying to find the instructions on how to make a full book cover wrap in Canva (I know it’s all you guys love me for haha).

The good news is that DNS menu is going to look similar no matter where you host your website. The information your newsletter aggregator might be a bit different, but just copy it from them and paste it where it should go in your website’s DNS records.

Here is the MailerLite DNS tutorial.

Next you’ll want to add the DMARC, and what’s really cool is that DMARC is the same for everyone. I copied what Holly put into her domain and you can copy what I put in mine: TXT is the type, _dmarc is the name, and v-DMARC1: p=none; is the value. MailerLite also has a tutorial for this, but if you did the SPF and the DKIM, then this will be more of the same.

I didn’t do it the way they did, but what I did worked and I’m not going to go back and change it.

If you want to check your DMARC and see if you pass, you can use this free site: https://dmarcian.com/dmarc-inspector/

Holly goes through this in her video that she shares in her blog article, and she tells you how you can know if what you did worked by sending yourself a test newsletter email.

This is what my content looked like before I did the authentication and the DMARC:

What all this does is tell someone’s email platform where your email is coming from and you want it to say your website, not your newsletter aggregator.

My test email came to me all right and my website is back up and doing okay now. I won’t know 100% for sure if everything is fine until this blog post posts correctly, my next campaign is sent and opened, and February comes and goes and doesn’t cause any trouble.

It’s really difficult to stay in compliance with all of these things and I’ve seen authors who have just given up having a newsletter. I can understand that, especially after tallying up all the money I put into WordPress alone. I probably don’t need more than a personal package for this site but I upgraded when I thought I needed more. Saving $50.00 a year I guess isn’t that big of a deal, but I’ll consider it if I ever get to the point where I have to pay for MailerLite. So far I’m under 1,000 subscribers and likely will stay that way since my Bookfunnel integration went down the drain with the MailerLite migration to the new platform. Though, I’m saving money not running ads to my reader magnet anymore, and that money can go toward ads to the books I’m actually selling.

This wasn’t meant to be a detailed tutorial because there are so many different website hosts out there and so many newsletter aggregators too. I feel like everyone is scrambling to get this done and hosts and newsletter support are familiar with everyone’s troubles. Reach out to your support if you need to. I don’t send many emails but I want to stay in compliance so that the emails I do send are delivered properly.

If you run a newsletter and want to test the spammy-ness of it, this is a fun website. Send a test email to it and see what your score is. https://www.mail-tester.com/

Promos
Because I downgraded my Bookfunnel account, I promptly spent the money on a BargainBooksy through Written Word Media. I’m advertising Give & Take, the first real promo I’ve done for that book and the trilogy since I redid the covers and edited the insides. I dropped the price of book one to .99 and I’ve been selling a few here and there. I’m running a Facebook ad to it, and I’ve sold 29 ebooks since the first of the year. I’ve also had 5907 page reads which equals out to about 15 books. Hopefully the BargainBooksy will kick that into gear and I can finally move my trilogy. It really is a shame I dropped the ball with the covers when I released them but I didn’t know the insides were so messy, so giving them an overhaul was the right choice. If you don’t remember what my covers were like before, here’s the comparison:

I’ll never get that first year back, but the insides weren’t my fault. I grew as a writer and spotted the flaws after the fact. That’s all you can really do, and as an indie, I have the freedom to fix the mistakes that were made. Now that I know what my tics are, I can write better books moving forward.

King’s Crossing Series Update
Not much new to report there. I’ve been distracted with newsletter changes and glitches, not feeling the best, and my son started a new job and I’ve taken on the role of unpaid taxi driver (he gets anxiety behind the wheel and doesn’t have his driver’s license). I’m working on Book 3, rewriting sentences, smoothing out scenes, adding words, deleting sentences. I think what I’ve learned in going back and redoing the trilogy and now this series is that taking time away from your WIP is very helpful. You can see more clearly what’s missing. I’m only on chapter eight of twenty-four, and I’ve already added 3k words. I’ll probably double that by the time I’m done. But it sounds richer, the scenes don’t sound as choppy. I’ve spent three years with these characters and I’m adding more emotional depth. This is slow going, but I’m pleased with how they’re sounding so far. I’m also playing with covers, but I’ll do a separate post about that later.

Personal Adventures
Last Monday I woke up to my back bumper ripped halfway off my car. I don’t know if someone hit it or tried to pull it off, but either way, they caused over 2k worth of damage. I just paid it off, literally, a month prior, so this was not the way I was hoping to celebrate. Luckily, I pay for full coverage and the car is drivable until I can get into the body shop and have it repaired. On top of the migration issues I was having then still not feeling all that great, I didn’t need this on my plate. Fortunately, I was able to get into the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN sooner than I thought, and I only have to wait three weeks to hopefully get some answers. My deductible would have paid for that trip, but it is what it is. Things happen. It could have been worse, and I’m thankful I can still at least drive it. My sister also experienced some car issues, and I had to pick her up and take her home after the tow truck towed her car to the dealership for engine trouble. 2024 hasn’t been kind, but I’m trying to keep my spirits up.

That’s all I have for this week, but at 2,100 words, I suppose that’s enough. I just hope that all I did for my newsletter compliance will suffice and that I don’t have to do anything else with my newsletter for a long time. My promo for Give & Take runs on Thursday, the 18th, and if you want to see what it looks like, you can subscribe to the BargainBooksy newsletter. They’ll drop you emails telling you what the bargain books are for the day.

I’m tired, and even a cup of coffee won’t fix it.

Until next time!

Thursday Author Update

Posted on December 21, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

I thought I would write quick update being that this will be the last one of 2023. Next Monday on Christmas Day I’ll post my year-end recap and on New Year’s Day, I’ve decided to take the day off. After that, I’ll post what I want to accomplish in 2024 and fall back into my usual posting schedule.

Mainly all I’ve been doing is editing my King’s Crossing series. I got through number one and added almost two thousand words. Some of the scenes were sparse and I filled them in. That is what is happening with book two–I’m only halfway through and have already added 1500 words. It’s really interesting reading these since they were the first books I wrote when I switched to first person, but not only that, I can tell I pantsed a lot of the plot (she just said what?!). I’m going slower than I’d like, but I have to make sure these are the way I want them to be before I publish. Like my rockstars, I’m not going back to edit them ever again, and though I know perfection isn’t obtainable, I want to make sure they are done to the best of my ability. So even though I said I would like to start publishing them in March, I might not be able to do that. I was hoping to get through each book in two weeks’ time, but there are some chapters that are so long that it takes me days to get through them.

Which leads me to this question: How long should a chapter be?

My most recent chapter I edited was 14,000 words long. There is one chapter in one of the later books that is 21,000 words long, and no, I didn’t accidentally add a zero.

When I started with the idea of dual POV, I didn’t think much beyond that I simply knew what it was, that’s how contemporary romances were being written and that they were selling. I had read books in dual POV like Sylvia Day’s Crossfire Series, and I never thought much about length of chapters. As long as there is stuff going on that moves the plot along, and the chapters are fast-paced and don’t drag, why should it matter how long a chapter is? I’ve read a couple books where the book is “dual” but we don’t hear from the male POV for chapters into the book. There was one book I read that took so long to get to his, I wasn’t even sure if his POV was included and I almost did not finish (DNF). I like the man’s POV more than the woman’s and I always have. I think that reflects in my writing too, where I wouldn’t be surprised if there is more male POV in my books than female. Writing that made me curious, and here’s the breakdown of A Heartache for Christmas:

Sawyer’s POV: 54,114
Chapter one, 1,611
Chapter three, 3,681
Chapter five, 8,152
Chapter seven, 7,266
Chapter nine, 4,894
Chapter eleven, 10,691
Chapter thirteen, 4,354
Chapter fifteen, 10,305
Chapter seventeen, 3,160

Evie’s POV: 43,050
Chapter two, 878
Chapter four, 5,907
Chapter six, 4,355
Chapter eight, 6,302
Chapter ten, 6,772
Chapter twelve, 8,930
Chapter fourteen, 2,750
Chapter sixteen, 7,156

As you can see, I started writing long chapters and never stopped. I gave Sawyer 11,064 more words, but in this case, it makes sense because he was solving a mystery and needed the page time. This also goes along with how I used to write my 3rd person books. I never wrote in chapters, only scene breaks, and then I would chop up my book in editing. I couldn’t think in chapters and maybe I still don’t. I end a POV when it needs to be ended and not any sooner to stay in line with some arbitrary chapter-length rule. Because if you have a POV that needs five chapters to be told, why are you cutting up that POV? It doesn’t make any sense, but then, I guess you don’t have a 95k word book with only sixteen chapters in it. Is there a wrong way? I think the only wrong way cutting up something into such small parts is if the reader doesn’t have time to get invested. Your readers have to care about your characters–that’s nonnegotiable. They can’t do that if they’re not given the time to do so.

Anyway, so when I’m dealing with a 14,000 word chapter where parts need to be beefed up a bit here and there and then I have to go back and read, not only to make sure I didn’t add any typos but to make sure that what I added blends into what was previously there and what came before it, then yeah, the editing process slows way down. Unfortunately. But, on the bright side, I am still loving these books, and I’m enjoying the process. These will probably be the biggest project I’ll ever tackle. I’m not really interested in writing this big of a project again, and I have no idea how these are going to be received. I hope these sell well, even boost-my-career-to-the-next-level well, but these will take a time and money commitment from a potential reader and you just never know. No one wants to write books that no one will read, and there are no guarantees.

As for what else I’m doing, that series will consume all my attention, my every free second, until they’re done. I’m still aware I need to redo their covers too, as the more I read these books the more convinced I am that the covers they have now don’t and won’t do them justice. I’ve been playing with hiring GetCovers to do them. They are inexpensive and after I get my tax refund in February could afford to cover six books, but I’ve heard you get the best results if you find the elements (stock photos) you want them to use. Finding the male models is what takes the longest and if I’m going to do that on my own, I might as well do the whole thing myself. But I have plenty of time to play with that–I just need to remind myself that experimenting with cover concepts is just as important as the editing. Thank God the blurbs are done, though I’ll go over them one more to be sure they sound okay.

Be sure to check next week for my year-end recap. My rockstars boosted me up a bit, so hopefully I’ll have more to report. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas if you celebrate! I’m having my sister and ex-husband over and I’m cooking turkey, cheesy hashbrowns (we had mashed potatoes and gravy for Thanksgiving), green bean casserole, and the yummy cheddar biscuits from Red Lobster you can buy as a mix. It will be a small meal, but difficult to orchestrate as everything needs oven time and I only have one. Oh well. It will work out. I managed on Thanksgiving.

One last thing before I sign off for this week…there has been lots said about Bryan Cohen and his free Amazon ads course that he hosts. Some call him a scammer and only wants to recruit people into his Amazon Ads School, some say he doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to Amazon ads, (calling his method throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks) some say if he’s not selling books not to listen to him (something I don’t believe because a lot more goes into selling books than knowing how to use an ad platform) but I’ve joined in with the challenge many times, and if you want a free way to learn Amazon ads, Bryan is the one to teach you to do it. There are many strategies to experiment with when it comes to Amazon ads, or any ad platform for that matter, and Bryan teaches you one way. For free. He goes into a lot more than just how to set up an ad. He goes through and makes sure you understand if your book is ready to throw money at it (and a lot of times people find out the answer is no) and teaches you how to write hooks and more. I’m not saying his way is the end-all, be-all way. There are plenty of people out there who do ads like Robert Ryan, Janet Margo, and Ricardo Fayet (from Reedsy), but if you join in with the challenge, you have a ton of help and people to bounce ideas off of in the Facebook group. You can use Bryan’s free course as a springboard for getting your feet wet, and then move on to other strategies by other people. Anyway, so I just wanted to throw that out there, and if you were planning to learn Amazon Ads in 2024, then you can sign up for Bryan’s course that’s starting on January 17th and decide for yourself if his spaghetti deserves a plate at your table. You can sign up here. https://learn.bestpageforward.net/jan24/ (These are not affiliate links.)

Enjoy the rest of the week and have a restful weekend!

Advertising versus Marketing: an Indie’s interpretation

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

Words: 2725
Time to read: 14 minutes (FML, I’m sorry!)

When I go through and read threads and posts about marketing, I’m surprised sometimes by the misunderstanding. I shouldn’t be because I had the same misunderstandings long ago. I don’t think authors really grasp the concept of what a long game writing and publishing is. We’re still hopeful that we’ll be an overnight success and that marketing will be taken care of for us by a viral TikTok or a random influencer who happens to love our book. The problem with that though, is that even if something like that were to happen, a lot of us don’t have our ducks in a row to keep that tail going.

During my first five or six years of publishing, I didn’t get what marketing was because I was thinking of each book singly as I published it. I also didn’t understand the magnitude of putting my work out there for strangers to enjoy (or not)…the responsibility I had as an author who is asking for readers to pay for a product. I was caught in an indie Twitter bubble, and honestly, it took me many many years to get out of it, or to realize I was in it, to be honest. Looking back at the first three books I published that I had no right to publish at all, and then the first trilogy I published that is still not good but better than what I had published before, I’m a little embarrassed I was so clueless. Sometimes you can’t learn unless you do it and fuck it up while you’re at it, but when you’re selling something, you’re also playing with people’s money.

When we talk about advertising vs. marketing, we’re going to assume your book is as good as it can be inside. If you’re getting any type of poor review that indicates the editing isn’t there, your character arcs aren’t fully formed, or there’s just an overall discontent with your book, you may need to revisit and revise. No amount of advertising or marketing is going to sell your subpar book and you can’t build an author brand on a shaky foundation. That’s what took me six years to learn, and maybe you need six years too, but six years is a long time to waste if you just believe what I say instead.

So this is what I’ve parsed out in my years publishing, especially the past three when I started writing for my pen name:

Advertising: Deciding what book you want to write next! Yay!
Marketing: Choosing a standalone or a series and which genre, knowing if you’re going to meet reader expectations, if you’re going to write to market, how long the book(s) are going to be, and if you’re going to write a series, if you’re going to write them all at once and rapid release them or if you’re going to publish as you go and how long that’s going to take.
Publishing, as we say, is a very long game, and you have to be honest with yourself. If you’re planning a five book series but you work full-time and have children, how long is that five books going to take you to write? Five years? If you do that and want to publish as you go, how are you going to keep your audience interested so they don’t forget about you while you’re writing the next one? I’ve spoken a lot about series on this blog, and I’m not going to rehash my pros and cons here, but advertising one book because it’s done and published is a lot different than creating a marketing and publishing plan for an entire series–especially if it’s long and won’t be completed for several years.

Advertising: You’re creating a cover for your book that you’ll use in ads like Amazon Ads and Bookbub CPC ads and social media graphics.
Marketing: You’re creating a cover for your book that will fit in with the image you want to project as an author, build your brand, and be recognizable to readers the instant they see a cover that belongs to one of your books. Not to mention convey the genre your book is written in (because you chose a genre, right?).
I think this is one of the hardest lessons I learned. I was pretty adamant that I was going to make my own covers when I first started writing and publishing, teaching myself with the help from a book that is now 100% obsolete how to make a PDF in Word. Because of that, you can thank me for the Canva how-to blog posts I have here on the website, which gets hits every day. I never would have been able to do that for others if I hadn’t learned it for myself first. That’s not to say it was the smartest thing I ever did, considering I made a lot of mistakes I still see indies make today–using a free photo from Pixabay, et al, not having any idea of a consistency stretching across other books in their catalogue, and having zero idea that the cover should actually match the spice-level my book was written in (people will tell you to browse the top 100 in your genre for a reason). I guess because my book had no specific genre, that made it kind of difficult to do any research had I even known to do it. (Romantic Speculative fiction, anyone? Blah.) One of my favorite examples of what I mean is Melanie Harlow. She has the cutest font for her name, her covers all have the same vibe, and with the sweeping font she uses for a lot of her titles, I know right away if it’s a Melanie Harlow book. I love everything she does and she knows her brand like nobody’s business. If you want to see what I mean, look at her website: https://www.melanieharlow.com/
If you work with the same designer (or do them for yourself) you’ll eventually end up with a cohesive vibe. We all have our own styles, and that will show. Choose a nice font for your name that you won’t get tired of. Decide if you’re going to do single men, couples, lighthouses, streets, what have you, depending on your genre. You want your Amazon author page to look TOGETHER. I’ve seen some author pages that look like I’m digging through a giveaway book box at a rummage sale, and that’s not a way to grab a reader . . . or their loyalty.

Advertising: You’re buying a promo spot like Freebooksy, Bargainbooksy, E-Reader News Today, Fussy Librarian, or something similar for one of your books to see if you can generate some buzz.
Marketing: You’re mapping out your promos for the next 12 months based on what you have coming down your publishing pipeline.
I heard a big-time author say you should be doing something every quarter–that’s four times a year. (It comes in handy if you’re in Kindle Select because they give you 5 free days per title, you guessed it, four times a year.) If you don’t have the backlist (or the front list) to continually run sales, you have to sit down and decide how fast you can write and what the next three to five years are going to hold for you. You don’t have much to market or advertise if you’re not writing and publishing, and what you’re writing and publishing will be important. You can do a sale or do a free promo, but unless you’re in KU where you might get some page reads during your promo, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to give away a standalone novel, especially if it’s your only book. If all you have are standalone novels, make sure your back matter is pointing your reader to the next standalone (if you like this book, check out this book) and/or to your newsletter.
You may be thinking you can’t afford to do something like that four times a year, and I understand that completely. In time you’ll start to earn out your fee or get ahead, and if you never do, then the conversation turns back to quality (book covers and blurbs) and craft (how well are the insides written).
So, grab a wall calendar and map out the next 12 months. I can mark up my new releases from now until the beginning of 2025. Can you?

Advertising: You decide to write XX genre for your next release, but you’ve written and published XX genre under the same name so your backlist is going to look a bit wonky. That’s okay though because you’re going to focus all your social media efforts and advertising promo dollars on your new release.
Marketing: You’ve decided on Small Town Romance, that is where you will stay, and that is what you want to be known for.
Everyone tells you not to genre-hop, and a lot of indies don’t listen, saying that it boxes them in or stifles their creativity. I get it. I went from Billionaires to Rockstars because I wanted to write my Rockstar trilogy and that’s what I did. I had an amazing idea for a trilogy and I wasn’t going to not write it–that would be dumb, right? I mean, rockstars are rich too, and as I’ve pointed out in the past, my books are still more contemporary romance than true Billionaire romances. Just because I make them rich doesn’t exactly mean they’re going to meet reader expectations, but so far I haven’t gotten any feedback to indicate readers are unhappy. Romance is neat in that you can choose a genre like small town romance, but the sky’s the limit when it comes to tropes. Most romances are written with a trope for a foundation, and it doesn’t matter which genre or subgenre you choose. So far, I haven’t found that writing Billionaire is stifling–there are many many tropes and you can twist them your own way to keep them fresh. Here’s a blog post I did on consistency: https://vaniamargene.com/2021/12/20/buzzword-consistency/

Advertising: I’m going to post on Social Media every chance I get. All my followers are other writers, but that’s okay–authors are readers too.
Marketing: Starting a reader group or author page on FB and joining reader groups for the genre you write in. Using author groups for publishing information and networking to find beta readers, editors, and making friends for newsletter swaps.
Bursting out of the writing community bubble was hard, but I think I’m finally doing it. It helps that Twitter imploded and I don’t waste time there anymore and besides all the authors whom I follow and who follow me back on IG where I rarely post, all my social media (besides this blog) now is for readers. I’m slowly building up a readership on my FB author page, VM Rheault, and my V’s Vixens Read Romance FB page, mostly because I run ads from it and I post so it doesn’t look empty. When I started my TikTok account, the smartest thing I did was not label myself as an author. I didn’t think it was necessary as I’m not posting non-fiction (like writing updates) there, and I’m keeping my author following to a minimum, too. I understand that social media is free and falling into the writing community is easy, especially on Twitter and Instagram, but there really is no cheap way to find readers that’s effective. Surprisingly, I’ve had better cost per click using Facebook ads, and when I paused my Amazon ads during Zoe York’s Stuff Your eReader day, I didn’t turn them back on. My sales haven’t suffered, so I’ll wait and see. I have two ads running on FB right now, one for Twisted Alibis and one for Rescue Me. I don’t want to say free social media is useless–established authors still have great success and engagement with reader groups, but filling your social media following with other writers or family and friends won’t get you the sales you’ll want long-term.

Advertising: You start a newsletter but don’t offer anything as an incentive to sign up and don’t push the link anywhere but on social media where the same people hang out.
Marketing: You start a newsletter and have a reader magnet that is a great sample of the kinds of things you’ll be writing or reflect what’s in your backlist. You add the sign up link to the back matter of all your books, you add the link wherever you can–Amazon Author Page bio, your BookBub Author Page bio, FB reader groups (if it’s allowed) and anywhere else you can get signups like BookFunnel or StoryOrigin promotions. You also push the link and your reader magnet with FB ads and promos like Fussy Librarian and Bookdoggy.
Probably the number one reason I hear for not starting a newsletter is that authors don’t like them so therefore don’t want to offer them, and the second is that they don’t know what to write. Like publishing, building a newsletter list a long game, but the longer you wait, the harder it is and the more urgent it will feel. I should have started one a long time ago, but I can genuinely say the first six years I’ve been doing this was all just one big learning curve. Maybe you aren’t ready for the information in this blogpost–and that’s okay. We do have to write the books of our hearts and in our own time, learn for ourselves that shilling books on Twitter will only go so far, and realize that if you try, you can actually make some money at this publishing thing.

If you don’t think I know what I’m talking about, I pulled up the graph from my lifetime of publishing. As you can see, I had some spikes, anomalies, but the slight upward trajectory since June of 2022 when I first released Captivated by Her and Addicted to Her means more to me than the unexplained sale spikes. Consistency will win the race, and one day my sales will make me a small, if not steady, profit.

I could be sad that it took me so long to figure things out, but I met some great people along the way and learned a lot. I wasn’t prepared for success to come any earlier, but if I wrote something and a TikTok influence loved it now, I would know what to do with the attention and that’s really important. I’m still small potatoes, and I know that, especially since I’ve joined some TikTok for Author groups on FB, and holy hell, can those billionaire/mafia/dark romance authors rake it in. But after all the books I’ve written, I think I found where my heart truly lies–with rich guys written in angsty first person. Finding my niche may have been the biggest accomplishment from the past six years. Now I can write happily in a genre while building my audience.

You can look at advertising as something you do in the present, something that builds buzz short term, but marketing is something you do over months and years, pushing yourself as an author, what your brand is, as well as your books and what they’re about. But, you do need content, and that’s what trips people up, I think. You need be writing, need to have something for people to read, be it books or newsletter content. Time can be a huge factor and that’s why I suggested buying a wall calendar and mapping out what you think you can do for the next year or two.

It’s tiring, believe me, I know. If I didn’t love writing so much, I would have quit long ago, but I do love it, already thinking of what I’m going to write next, even if that won’t be published until the spring of 2025. God knows if I’ll even be alive then with the way I feel some days, but I never want people to think I’m floating on this cloud tapping away at my keyboard, when you probably would never believe the number of down days I have. My sexy men keep me going, and I hope your characters, when you’re down, keep you going too.

Have a good week!

Monday Author Update

Posted on July 10, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

Happy Monday! As much as it pains me to admit, summer is a third over. I wouldn’t say our weather has been particularly great–not a lot of warm days and lots of rain–but I appreciate the slower feel to the days even if my job hasn’t gotten the memo and my work hours are just as busy as any other time of the year.

I finished with my rockstar trilogy. I formatted them with Vellum, assigned the ISBNs in Bowker (I live in the States), finished my covers, and ordered the proofs. Once they come, I’ll hand them over to my proofreader and hopefully get them up on Booksprout for reviews by the middle of August. It was a lot of work, but I’m happy with how they turned out. I tried something new with the formatting since I updated Vellum and I wanted to see how easy it was. I added a chapter header graphic that I found on DepositPhotos. Finding it was surprisingly fast, but I did have to use GIMP to flip it and crop the white out. Here is the original, the cropped version, and how it looks inside the book:

abstract musical background with notes–original from DepositPhotos

This is will be for the paperbacks only. Ereaders don’t support chapter headers so I’ll do the simple chapter images like I have in the past. It’s a little more work, but not much, and I think the paperbacks will be worth it, even if I don’t sell many. I had to up my prices too, because these are so long, and they’re going to be 14.99 instead of 12.99. I try to keep my prices low, and they’re 12.99 in countries like the UK and France, 14.99 in Canada, and 17.99 in Australia. I didn’t want to put them that high there, but considering I only make .50 off each purchase, it’s as low as I could go. My ebooks are still 4.99, and I think that’s the way they will stay. Rescue Me is still .99 and I might take that off sale soon. It’s been on sale for a few months now, so it might be fun to run a sale on Faking Forever.

I feel more confident about the covers, too, than for the ones I did for my Lost & Found Trilogy. I like the models better, even if they still don’t quite look 50. That’s okay. I found a background that I liked and added smoke to the bottom to help the title and my name pop. I didn’t workshop these, though I asked a friend what she thought. I looked through a lot of rockstar romance covers, and there wasn’t one set way authors were doing them. A few had an audience at the bottom with male model blended into the top, but I think the stage in the background suits, and I want to thank one of the members in the Indie Cover Project for her recommendation of the title font. I workshopped Rescue Me, and she suggested it. I didn’t end up using it, but I kept it in mind and it works here.

Maybe it’s a little premature to post them here, since I want to do a cover reveal to my newsletter subscribers later this week, but I wanted to show you how they look like they belong together. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in my years of indie publishing is to make your series look like they belong. It’s especially important as you build your backlist and your series will be listed on your Amazon author page. You want them easily identifiable at a quick glance–and I see authors struggling with this in some of my author groups. Sometimes I think it’s because they publish as they go–they are thinking about one book and one book only. Since I wait and publish together, I think of my trilogies and series as one large project, not each book on an individual basis. That might spill over into how I write them, too, as I have a review on Safe & Sound, the third book in my Lost & Found trilogy, that said she didn’t consider these books standalones within the series. When I write them, I think of them as one long, continual story, even if they are centered around different couples. I can’t start a series without reading them in order, and I guess I think most readers are like me.

I want to do better promoting these on social media–and I’ll start posting on IG and FB soon. I don’t think my proofreader is going to find anything serious–no large, gaping plot holes that will take days to fix–but I don’t want to post dates until I know for sure. While I do that, I’m going to dive into writing the Christmas novel I wanted to write. I need something quick and easy to put together after releasing two trilogies this year. I found the notes of the novel I want to write–but after skimming them, it’s no wonder I couldn’t put the pieces together. I have an idea and nothing more, so I’ll have to figure out what I was trying to do. I have a few notebook pages of story, and I don’t like what I where I was going with her, so I’ll need to rethink that character. Still, it has potential, and most times that can be enough to write something good. I just need to sit with a pen and notebook and brainstorm.

That’s about all I have for this week. It’s odd being between projects. I may never get used to the feeling of not actively writing something, but I’m trying to enjoy the short break. I should use the time to make up some social media graphics in Canva, too, and once again, after seeing a fellow romance author who went viral on TikTok post in a group she bought a car with her royalties, circling around to that platform, too.

For now, I’ve dumped Twitter. I’m not going to tweet much of anything and won’t post my new releases on there. I pared down my bio and put up a generic header. If I do post, it will be through sharing and I won’t check notifications. I want to focus what energy I wasted there on IG where I think I may get a better return on investment. I’m also trying to participate more in my romance FB groups. Like I said in my last blog post, I’ve been networking with the wrong people, and that is one of the mistakes I need to rectify. The friends I have made on Twitter know where to find me elsewhere, and can say adios without remorse.

I hope you had a good holiday if you were in Canada or the US, and find little ways to enjoy the rest of your summer.

When do you know when your book is done?

Posted on June 26, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

books and flowers with quote:

“A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.”

--Samuel Johnson,
Works of Samuel Johnson

Since I’ve been listening to my trilogy, that’s a question that has been on my mind the last few days. Listening to my books to find typos, missing words, extra words, and syntax issues is the last editing step I will never skip. In an FB group someone said they paid a proofer (an exorbitant amount, in my opinion) who missed too many errors for the price she was charging. Listening to your manuscript can help you find and fix all those issues, and from the feedback the reviewers give me on Booksprout, I catch 99.9% of mistakes. (One reviewer found only one typo in Faking Forever, and I was so proud of that!)

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a second set of eyes on your books if you can find a set that doesn’t cost and arm and a leg, but like I wrote in my last blog post, finding people you can trust is impossible at worst and difficult at best.

So, when do I know when my book is done?

I honestly don’t spend a lot of time on my books and you can take that however you want to. Product quality will always be subjective, and I see that all the time online. People who can write quickly are judged and accused of putting out crap, as if spending more time on your manuscript means you’ve got the next great American Novel on your hands, ah, laptop. Not everyone wants to spend the next five years writing their next book. In fact, if someone told me I had to spend five years writing my next book, I wouldn’t even start. Some writers don’t bother to even finish a WIP before it’s on to the next shiny thing, but I can’t have projects overlapping in my brain. I need to finish one and then go on to the next. It’s just how I am.

books and flowers with quote:

It’s being ready to accept rejection. You can work on a book for two years and get it published, and it’s like you may as well have thrown it down a well. It’s not all champagne and doing interviews with The New York Times.

George R. R. Martin

When I write a first draft, it’s pretty clean. I don’t like to edit, though I’m getting better, and I never rewrite unless I find an inconsistency and I have no choice. There’s nothing I love more than reading my own books, but knowing I have things to fix makes me crabby and I try to avoid it. I edit as I go along, especially inconsistencies I know are there. Everyone will have their own process, but if you hate editing, plotting your books to avoid plot holes and knowing your grammar and punctuation to avoid errors can give you a cleaner first draft.

Standalones are easier than duets or trilogies just because you’re not dealing with so many words. The trilogy I’m working on now wasn’t supposed to be one, and I’m thankful I don’t publish as I go. I would have been in a world of hurt when it came to details that link all the books together. I had no choice, anyway, once I decided there was going to be a book two and three because there was so much foreshadowing to book one I needed to add.

books and flowers with quote:

If you're going to publish a book,
you probably are going to make
a fool of yourself.

--Annie Dillard

Once I get them all written, I immediately reread them all and make notes of character details like eye and hair color, and who knows what. That was a big one for this trilogy as this has a twisty murder in it, and I needed to keep track of what information each character had. Even at the end of the trilogy, not everyone knows everything, and I had a few pages of notes to keep everything straight.

I read book one more times than the others, but books two and three got their share. The story is set in stone by the time I listen to them. In a perfect world, I would have a beta read them before I listen, but the more productive you are, the harder it is to find someone to help you. Especially if you can’t afford the help and are looking for free or are trading services. I had a free beta lined up for book one, before I knew it was going to be a trilogy, but after I decided to add books two and three I didn’t ask her. I know I write fast, I know I produce a lot of books, and that is just too much for someone to take on. Not many people agree with the idea you should edit your own work, but sometimes that’s just how it has to be.

I have a pretty decent memory and usually know when I’ve messed up with consistency. It’s difficult when a character says one thing at the beginning and near the end says something else. That usually happens because they’ve grown in the middle, but you have to make sure that growth is on the page and not in your head or the character’s head. If you’re having trouble picking that stuff out for yourself, you probably need a manuscript critique or a developmental edit if you can afford it.

In book two of my trilogy, Eddie wants to keep his relationship with Clarissa a secret. Well, he says he does, but every little thing he does negates what he says. He moves in with her, tells his best friend he’s living with her, is in love with her, and was having an affair with her while she was married to his bandmate. Parks in the driveway instead of hiding his car in the garage. Doesn’t mind when other people find out he’s seeing her. Little things add up to the fact that while he said he wanted to keep their relationship a secret, he really didn’t want to. He was doing his best to out himself even if he didn’t realize it. It even took me a while to realize that’s what he was doing, but after that clicked, it made total sense. He was tired of hiding her, and I hope my readers understand that. It’s funny when things like that make it into your writing, almost like a subliminal message. I only mention this because I thought I had a big problem with consistency. He was continually saying one thing but doing another. It wasn’t intentional, but it was, and I’m actually really proud of that. (And super glad I didn’t have a ton or rewriting ahead of me!)

flowers and books with quote:

The process of writing a book is so removed in my mind from the process of publishing it that I often forget for great stretches that I eventually hope to do the latter.

--Karen Joy Fowler

I have to be pretty sure my books are how I want them before I start listening to them. How do I get to that point? I don’t get tired of my books, per se, but there is an eagerness to get them done and move on to the next thing. I don’t have a problem with perfection, and anyone reading in their genre and who can be honest knows some of the best selling books aren’t perfect either. I’m proud of my books, but doesn’t mean I’m going to reread them 120 times and haggle with myself over comma placement. If you don’t know about a comma, listen to the sentence both ways. You’ll right away if it belongs or not. For me, there’s only so much you can do for a book after it’s written. I’ve done my best by it and it’s time to nudge it out of the nest to see if it can fly.

Of course, you don’t want to publish too soon. I’ve seen this happen and the results can be… not good. You really don’t want readers to pay for a subpar product, and if my proofer finds stuff in the paperback proofs, of course I’m going to fix them. I wouldn’t ignore her findings because I’m in a hurry. That’s what she’s there for.

I’m not sure if I answered the question, “How do I know my books are ready to publish?” It’s more of a feeling, a proud sense of accomplishment that they’re done and ready to go out into the world. They sound good, the plot is solid. I had reservations about Faking Forever. I didn’t like Fox, and I was worried other readers wouldn’t like him either. But I wasn’t going to rewrite it or scrap the book. There actually was nothing I could rewrite. The story was what it was. The only thing I could have done was not publish it at all, but it was already there, already done, and I took a chance. That was a book that didn’t have a proofer or a beta reader. I put it out 100% on my own. Maybe had I had feedback first I wouldn’t have felt like I did. Or I might have felt worse. Who knows. I’m not looking at the reviews. You can do that if you want to see how readers like it.

Books with flowers and quotes

Self publishing is not as easy as it is portrayed! When you think you have finished your book, proof read, proof read again, and again, and again. Don't believe it is ready until you have a hard copy proofed! --Phil Simpkin

You have to listen to your instincts and be honest about what your plans are. There are some writers who don’t ever plan to publish. They are in love with their characters and completing and publishing would mean they aren’t able to spend time with them anymore. That’s okay. I like publishing and I like knowing readers are reading my books. But I also like moving on to the next project. I’m trying to savor the process more–writing the blurbs, doing the covers, even uploading them on KDP. But trying not to be so quick is hard. Not really because I’m tired of working on that particular project, but because I’m excited to publish. It’s a lot of fun to put my books on Booksprout and send my newsletter ARC copies.

Probably the best advice I can give you is to not chase perfection. You’re not going to find it. I’ll reread books I’ve written and of course I find things I could change. That only means I’ve grown as a writer between writing it and that reread, but that doesn’t mean a reader won’t enjoy the book that exists. Kristine Kathryn Rusch has a talk about chasing perfection, and I post it every now and then. I think it’s a great. We’re our own worst critics and you can’t let that keep you from moving forward.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next week!

Monday Author Update and Plot-Driven vs. Character-Driven Novels

Posted on March 6, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

I have zero things to write about this week. All I’ve been focused on is getting words down for this trilogy, and as of right now I’m 62k into the second book. I am loving this couple though, and turning that standalone into more books was a good choice.

These are character-driven books, and every once in a while I get a touch of imposter syndrome. Are these books going to be boring? Is there enough going on? But I’ve come to realize that character-driven books are what I write. Probably the only book I’ve ever written where characters are actually moving around on the page is Wherever He Goes, but that’s a road trip novel. There’s not much of a road trip if they aren’t moving and things aren’t happening. I’ve described my books as “quiet”–characters exploring themselves and how they need to overcome their flaws to get what they want. There’s a fine line between a character-driven book that’s “quiet” and a book that drags. I don’t get a lot of feedback before I publish, but I’ve already had some volunteers for this trilogy. I’m going to need them, I think, if only to reassure myself that the books move forward and keep readers interested.

The biggest tip I have for anyone who wants to write a character-driven book, or think they are, is you can’t be repetitious. My books depend a great deal on dialogue, but that means when characters are speaking to each other, new information must be presented at all times or there must be some kind of internal revelation. If your characters are only rehashing what has been spoken of previously, you’re wasting your readers’ time. Always know what you want out of a scene, and if you have characters talking just for the hell of it, usually that’s a sign you don’t know what your characters need, what they want, or how they’ll go about getting it. With every conversation, information must be revealed for the first time and/or a personal discovery must be made because of that information. Most of the time, that’s not difficult, but sometimes, especially in real life, people need to hear something more than once for it to sink in, or they need to hear it from more than one person. That’s not a great thing in a novel and rehashing can slow your pace and bore your reader. Try to make each scene count.

Some people might be a little confused between what a plot-driven novel is and what a character-driven novel is. There are plenty of resources out there if you want to explore, but I like this slide by a presentation Melanie Harlow did a while back.

Surface problems are usually not that important in a character-driven romance novel. It’s the emotional wounds of the characters that keep them apart and are a bitch to overcome. The emotional wounds and the flaws they must overcome is what the 3rd act breakup is all about–if there is one. As you can see, the emotional wounds are what causes the true conflict in a romance novel, and if you don’t have those, everything that keeps your couple apart is superficial and readers won’t be invested in your couple staying together for their happily ever after.

Melanie spoke at the 20booksto50k conference last November, but her talk is incomplete and the audio for what is available is poor. But, I mention it because the slides are available, and they are a goldmine of information if you want to download them. https://drive.google.com/drive/folder… She’s also part of a steamy romance panel, which I haven’t watched yet (hello work/life balance) so I can’t comment on quality, but you can check it out here.

Also, there is an Emotional Wounds thesaurus available, and it’s great for digging and thinking up ideas for how to make your characters miserable. You can check it out here. https://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Wound-Thesaurus-Writers-Psychological/dp/0989772594

My Freebooksy for the first in my trilogy went really well. For the two days it was free, I gave away 3,797 copies. I think people are still confused how this can convert to royalties earned, and I’ve said in the past that a Freebooksy only works well if you’re giving away a first in series. Read-through is where the royalties come in. Also, if you’re in Kindle Select some readers will borrow your book instead of downloading it, and if they do that, you get paid for page reads. You have to weigh the pros on cons of paying to give your book away. It won’t give everyone the return on investment they’re looking for. In my case, between borrows and read-through, I earned back my fee ($120.00) in 4 days and so far have had a ROI of 131%. (ROI = Net income / Cost of investment x 100.) People don’t read right away and my book is sitting on 3,797 Kindles. I can only hope that as the weeks and months go by that people get to my book in their TBR piles and go on to read the other two books in the trilogy.

I admit I dropped the ball and didn’t have Amazon ads running during that time. That will probably turn into a mistake for me as I had nothing propping up that promotion. The only other thing I was doing was running an FB ad to Rescue Me, and I already said last week how that turned out. Right now I’m running an ad to Captivated by Her, but I’m watching it closely as the last time I tried, I didn’t get any sales for the clicks. I ended up pausing the ad. I have it on sale for .99 right now and I used a different graphic to go along with the ad. I’m hoping for a better outcome.

The next big push might be a Freebooksy for Captivated when my next standalone book comes out in May. Though I did want to try Fussy Librarian and Robin Reads as well. It’s hard to believe that I’ll have had 7 books come out in 11 months, but I know some authors can do that all day long for years. I think this pen name is coming along though, and I have no regrets pivoting.

The only thing I have left is what I’m loving right now. I’m excited I signed up for a TikTok class with Jane Friedman and Rebecca Regnier. It’s $25 and the slides (if there are any) and a replay is available if you can’t watch live. TikTok is probably going to be my next step in trying to get the word out there for my books, but I like to explore and learn before jumping in. If you want to sign up, you can do it here. https://www.janefriedman.com/tiktok-basics-for-writers-with-rebecca-regnier/

That’s all I have for this week. Until next time!

Plot Twist! Turning a standalone into a trilogy.

Posted on January 23, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

While I was writing, as I am wont to do for 30 hours a week because I don’t have a life, I stumbled upon something that was a surprise I honestly didn’t see it coming. It’s not entirely unwelcome, but it will put a wrench in my plans for this year. If you follow the blog at all, you’ll know I’m almost done with a rockstar standalone. At 94k at the moment of this writing, I know exactly what I need to finish up–how many words I’ll need is another thing, but no more than 20k, for sure. It’s a long book about a depressed and washed up rockstar whose manager hires a life coach to get him back on track to record another album. This rockstar has bandmates, and they’ve been kind of hanging out, literally and figuratively, and I had no plans whatsoever to give them their own stories…until I wrote this line on Thursday evening….

Brock sighs, and I understand all that sigh encompasses. An end of an era, but the start of a life they’re unsure of. They don’t have Liv in their corner, a future with a woman they love. Divorced and single, they’ve been drifting since Derrick’s death, the band the only thing anchoring them to the ground. If Ghost Town disappears, they’ll have nothing.
Twisted Lies and Alibis by VM Rheault

That made me sad… I don’t want to leave Brock and Eddie with nothing, even if I don’t know who they are, even if I haven’t invested in them one little bit and in my head they are completely interchangeable.

And so began the idea to turn this standalone into a trilogy….but it will require some work. Here’s what I’ll have to do:

Turn the secondary characters into people and write them into the story. Like I just said, I didn’t consider them anything more than prop characters and they barely have families much less backstories and almost no page time besides brief scenes here and there. Readers will need to get invested in their lives and who they are as people or they won’t care there are books about them. That may require some rewriting on my part and giving them more page time. Usually when I write a series, I plan them out first allowing me to foreshadow what will happen in the other books. They both have children and ex-wives, and that’s about as far as I got. Not a good foundation for two more books.

Who would their love interests be? This is a tough one because I had to sort out who I’ve already mentioned and how I could turn them into romantic partners for my characters. This book is about Sheppard Carpenter who is having an issue moving forward when one of his bandmates dies in a freak accident on stage and it triggers his depression. The bandmate, Derrick, who passed away, left a wife behind, and depending on why they were married and for how long, I think that could work. I don’t know anything about Clarissa, either (even her name is a placeholder because I’m not sure if she’s going to keep it), except she was filing for divorce at the time of her husband’s untimely death, and that could work in my favor. Olivia, the life coach who is helping Sheppard, wrote a self-help book some time ago and has an agent she’s still friends with who could potentially be the other love interest. I made her old…in her sixties, but that’s an easy fix. But book one is set in California, and Agatha’s based in Minnesota. How would they meet, and what’s her story? The possibilities are there, and that’s what counts.

What are their backstories? A good romance needs two people who have a lot to overcome to be together. Since I’m working with a primarily clean slate besides their names and a mention or two of their families, the sky’s the limit….but I’ll need to sit and brainstorm because I need to think of the tropes and emotional wounds I haven’t used before. The tropes aren’t so bad–they’re easy to change to differentiate one book from another, but unique tragic backstories, or front stories for that matter, need a bit more creative juice and in the best case scenario, I’ll figure them out soon so I can plant seeds in this first book. The best series string readers along so they have no choice but to read the next book and the next book. If I can’t even imply what book two will be about, you can forget read-through.

How long will these books be? I was thinking the standalone would be 110k, but if I kept up that pace, we’re looking at another 220,000 words. Sheppard’s and Olivia’s character arcs are long….they need space because they are both grappling with so much and they have so much to overcome mental health-wise for them to be together. I might be too close to my story, but for now, all my scenes seem to be needed for their character development, so we’ll see. I’m still writing it and I haven’t reread from the beginning. I also already have a couple betas lined up so maybe they can help me cut it down a little bit. I’m not opposed to longer stories, but if I have two more books in the works at 110k a piece, I’m looking at a minimum of another 6 months of writing. But, if I do keep the books that long, at 330,000 words, it will be my second biggest project (my 6-book series is over half a million words long, and my 4-book small town winter series is 288,000 words).

Covers. I already had a tentative cover if this was going to be a standalone, and quite honestly, I’m getting tired of doing my own. Doing standalones is a lot easier than coming up with a concept I can handle with my limited skills and finding stock images that I haven’t used before but accurately portray how old my male characters usually are is getting harder and harder. You can tease me all you want, but I’m not cutting their heads in half, no matter how much easier that would make my life. I’m also up against Amazon’s advertising guidelines, and I’m not popular enough to sell books by my name alone. I said a long time I don’t care if they reject my ads, but it’s a lie. Amazon ads are a big part of my marketing, and if I can’t advertise a trilogy, that’s page reads down the drain. So knowing I would have to do three covers instead of one is a small deterrent, but nothing that would keep me from the project.

Covers Update: As I wrote this blogpost on Thursday, I did some cover experimenting on Friday, flipping through stock photos for hours and hours. Literally, hours and hours. But, I think it might have paid off as I came up with a tentative concept for the trilogy. I was so pleased I found the cover models, I have already purchased them (do you know how difficult it is to find men that look like old rockstars???), and since I always let you in on my creative process, I’ll show you what I came up with. For some reason I don’t feel the doubt (and still feel, to be honest) that I did with the trilogy that’s releasing right now, but I still can’t say for sure if these will end up being the final thing. They kind of appear washed out and I may need to change the background, but I used screenshots and they’re grainy, so we’ll see what working with proper photos will do. It’s funny, while doing research for rockstar romances, that there isn’t one definite kind of cover. Of course, there are shirtless men galore, but I can’t go that way, and besides maybe a stage/audience in the background, there are no similar styles. A lot of times, like mine, the model isn’t even holding a guitar. That can be good for a designer in terms of flexibility, but bad for creating something that will for sure work to bring in sales. Anyway, I’ve never been one for a cover reveal, so here they are with tentative titles–those definitely are subject to change:

All in all, it sounds like I’m going to do it, especially since I have covers now, and it would be a nice addition to my backlist. It puts a glitch into my publishing schedule though, as I was going to put out two more standalones after my trilogy releases before I start publishing my 6-book series. I’m only pushing back my series because I really really really wanted some kind of audience already in place when I release these books. I honestly think they are going to either make or break my career (think Sylvia Day’s Crossfire series)… and I wanted to give them the best possible chance. I can only do that if I have some branding and a backlist in place already. I’m growing my newsletter, and I’ll be looking at promo opportunities through Bookfunnel as soon as THIS trilogy releases in full. The second book is out today, and I have had some good feedback on the first book. Releasing another trilogy before the series goes live would be great, but I need time to write. I have a standalone (billionaire’s fake fiancé trope) already queued up for April, and if I waited until July or even August, that gives me 7 months to finish this trilogy before I start needing something to release. That’s kind of pushing it, but as I have been dragging my feet with this book anyway, it would give me a deadline to work toward. Had I known this was going to happen, I would have strung out the Lost & Found Trilogy a little more, releasing two weeks apart instead of just one to buy me a more time, but that’s okay. That just means less time on Twitter, which is no big loss. I’ll miss touching base with some of my friends, but all the negativity is getting me down again. When authors have to drag other authors down so they feel good about themselves, that’s when I have to cut out. If you think you can write better, then go do that, publish, and market your bestseller. It’s obvious people like that think they have one, so prove it. Shut your mouth and go do that. Jealousy looks terrible and I hope one day their bitterness bites them in the butt.

If you want to read more about turning a standalone into a series, here are a couple of articles that helped me:

Writing A Series – And How to Grow A Series from a Standalone Book by Kate Frost

The Essential Guide for Writing a Series vs. a Standalone Novel
Written by Kyla Jo Magin in Fiction Writing

That is all I have for this post and I’ll keep you updated on my progress. Have a good week!

Thursday Author Update

Posted on November 3, 2022 by Vania Margene Rheault

It’s been a while since I posted on a Thursday, mostly because I haven’t had that much to say and I’ve been using Mondays as my author update days. Since last Monday was about book reviews, I thought I would use today to update you on my trilogy and what I’m doing now.

My proofs for my trilogy came back, and they are lovely. There are always going to be some tweaks, and I think I’m going to sharpen the background pictures a little more so that they look like they are actually standing in front of a city. The blur above the models’ right shoulders is actually the two buildings on the lower left of the back covers. Otherwise, I think the background colors are rich and beautiful and I have no doubt (not like my duet) that these will hit the market okay. I’ve gotten a few compliments on the large ampersand on the backs, as well, and I’m going to make the changes upload the final files this week/weekend.

I was going back and forth on what to write next as I have three standalones I could write pretty quickly, but in the end, I decided to finish a series I started last year. I have two books done, and I need four more. The first book I started as a standalone but as I got into it, it made sense for me to turn it into a series. It’s about a woman who’s father decides she should settle down and marry. He devises a list of acceptable potential husbands and tells his business partner that if he wants 50% of the company he needs to see to it that his daughter marries one of the men on the list. His business partner is in love with his daughter, of course, and the twist is, he’s not on the list, forcing him to choose between love with and 50% of a company he worked all his life for. It was a fun book to write, but while I was writing it, I realized that the men on the list could use their own stories, and that’s how the whole project was born.

It’s a little unsettling to realize that committing to this series will tie up the next year of writing for me. I can write relatively quickly for all the stuff I have going on in my life… I can comfortably write 80k words in 6-8 weeks, but then there’s editing and formatting, and covers to consider. Not to mention these books aren’t plotted out yet, and figuring out the story and how it layers into the plot is the real work of writing something this big. I waited until the last minute to put together my trilogy covers, unease and uncertainty chasing me until I practically hit publish, and I’d like a more solid plan this time around. (I already played with covers and titles for the first book–before I realized it would launch a series, or be a part of a new billionaire brand under my pen name. It’s so funny how covers and concepts evolve.) (And headless models. FFS, no! LOL) These are covers attached to a blog post on titling your book, and you can read it here.

I’m also thinking of how to brand this series, and what it’s going to be called. I like the idea of calling the series The List, and titling every book after the male character featured in it. It’s a departure from what I normally do, and I won’t have to think of titles for six books (which, let’s be honest, is a real headache).

So yeah, the last time I had a whole year accounted for, we were in lockdown and things felt pretty isolated anyway. I’m going to have to settle in, fall in love with these characters, and keep in touch with online writing friends so I don’t get lonely. But these books will be a nice addition to my backlist and I’ll be proud of them once their done.

In the mean time, I’ll make the adjustments to my trilogy, but I don’t know if I want to put the first one on BookSprout only because book one with reviews and books two and three with none would look odd (and give the impression of no read-through). Maybe I’ll look into paying for the next package so I can put all three books up at the same time, and I’ve always offered free copies to Twitter and my newsletter hoping for more reviews (that never come). So I have side things to keep me busy.

I haven’t given any love to my 3rd person books in a long time, so I scheduled a Freebooksy for my small town holiday wedding series for November 17-19th. I’m not even sure why I bothered since I’m not nurturing that pen name anymore (meaning, I’m not writing new books for it) but if the promo does as well as it did before (and the first book has six times the reviews it had before) then there’s no money lost. If you want to read how it went the first time, you can find it here. For the hell of it, since I’m not moving books anyway, I also scheduled the same free days for All of Nothing, The Years Between Us, and Wherever He Goes. The best thing about free days is if a reader has a Kindle Unlimited subscription, they’ll usually borrow it in KU before downloading it for free (and a borrow has the same weight as a paid sale). That’s why free promos, if you’re in KU, pay for themselves. It will be an exciting weekend, to say the least. I’m going to go ahead and still do another promo in January when my trilogy releases and focus on my 1st person books. But it makes sense to promote holiday books around the holidays, so no harm done. And for some reason, my paperbacks are extremely cheap right now, so maybe this promo will move some paperbacks, too. Who knows.

That’s about all I have going on. Going on a road trip with my sister on Monday to Bismarck, ND to eat at their Cracker Barrel and roam their mall. I’m hoping by that Tuesday I’ll be done with trilogy stuff and can really hop into this series. I was doing a little planning on it last night, old school, with pen and paper, but I didn’t get too far into it with my trilogy proofs mocking me from my desk. I never really could work on more than one thing at a time, but at least I don’t have “Look! Squirrel!” syndrome and finish the projects I start.

For Monday’s blog I’ll talk about my hardcovers, and I have a chat coming up with Jeanne Roland and A. K. Ritchie about publishing a second book, marketing, and all the fun stuff in between.

Thanks for reading today, and have a great weekend!

	Vania Margene Rheaul… on Updated! Creating a full wrap…
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	Christopher Marcus on Fake It ’til You Make It…
	Vania Margene Rheaul… on Fake It ’til You Make It…
	Christopher Marcus on Fake It ’til You Make It…

Vania Margene Rheault

Independent Contemporary Romance Author & Blogger

Category Archives: writing in a series

Author Update: King’s Crossing Series

Monday Author Update: Sweet Nothings.

Monday Author Update: Newsletter/Email Guidelines

Thursday Author Update

Advertising versus Marketing: an Indie’s interpretation

Monday Author Update

When do you know when your book is done?

Monday Author Update and Plot-Driven vs. Character-Driven Novels

Plot Twist! Turning a standalone into a trilogy.

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