Monday Musings: Editing, Book Launches, and the Rest of 2025

Posted on August 25, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,902 words
10 minutes read time

Editing Update
For the past few months I’ve been trapped in editing hell. A hell of my own making, but hell nonetheless. Anyway, I’m happy with the choices I’ve made, especially since I’ve sold a couple copies of Rescue Me since I updated the files. At the time of this writing, I’m waiting for another proof of Faking Forever to come because I forgot to add the “About the Book” section to the front. I also made a couple additional edits, but because you can edit a book forever and ever, after this second proof comes, I’ll just page through it and mark it done. Even if I happen to miss something, it will still sound 1000% times better than what it did, so I’ll consider that a win.

I’m still going through my Christmas novel and I’m hoping to be done with it by the end of the month. It’s a little slow going because I’m trying to avoid having to read through it again, but I guess I’ll skim the paperback proof when I order one. Of course there’s always a risk of editing in mistakes, but I’m not the only one that happens to, so I’ll just make peace with the fact that all the books I’ve edited in the past several weeks sound better than they did. I did a blog post on some of my changes for A Heartache for Christmas and you can read it here: https://vaniamargene.com/2025/08/18/when-dumbing-down-your-writing-isnt-dumb/

Loss and Damages Launch Activity
I haven’t been doing much for it except buy a Goodreads giveaway and run an Amazon ad to the preorder. At first I felt bad I spent the $99 dollars on the giveaway because other than exposure, like when I bought one for Cruel Fate, I won’t get much out of it. Comparing the two books might be worthless since Cruel Fate is the first in a six book serial and Loss and Damages is a standalone which (in my mind) makes it much more likely to be read, so chances are outcomes will be completely different anyway. But, I get paid three times in September, so after realizing that, I shrugged and moved the Goodreads receipt into my 2025 Book Spend folder to give to my accountant next April. All that being said, I’m at 832 entries and the giveaway ends the day the book is live, on September 15th. Since those free books are added to my sales dashboard, maybe they’ll count as “sales” and they’ll give me a little push that day. Who knows. If you want to enter, you can here: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/419642-loss-and-damages

The Amazon ad isn’t doing too much but it’s just another way to push my book out there, and for now, it’s low-cost. My ads going to other books are doing well, but my sales aren’t keeping up with ad spend so I may have to reassess them at the end of the month. For now, the ad has resulted in one pre-order. I usually get none, so that’s a small win all around.

snapshot of Amazon ads stats for Loss and Damages. 6422 impressions, three clicks, cost per click is .35 cents.

I have four paperback copies I ordered since my paperback is scheduled and I can order them without the proof stripe on the cover. I was thinking about maybe offering them on IG to a few bookstagrammers or something, but time is slipping away if I want to do that because half the appeal is getting the book and reading it before it releases. I have less than a month to do that now, and with shipping, even to the United States, I’m cutting it close. Still, it never hurts to put up a post, so I might be doing that sooner than later.

Overall, I don’t have other plans for it. Most times I forget I even wrote it and that I should be pushing it. I have a terrible habit of moving on before I really should be moving on, but I’m always thinking about the next thing, and being stuck in editing makes me antsy to write something new.

What subgenre in romance is hot right now:
If you get the K-Lytic’s marketing trends research newsletter, you’ll know that Cowboy and Western Romance is on the upswing. I never was one to care about cowboys, even if Glen Powell portrayed a pretty sexy one in Twisters (that I have seen approximately 100 times). Ranch and farm life is a bear to get right if you’ve never lived on a ranch or a farm. Tacking a horse incorrectly will get you skewered by readers who actually know how to ride, and that is a level of research that I just don’t care to do. Especially since the last, and only, time I rode a horse was back when I was ten and went to summer camp. The last time even I saw a horse in person was two winters ago when we went on a sleigh ride (“sleigh” being used loosely as there wasn’t much snow that year and we were actually on wheels) and I got to pet one before we set off. That, unfortunately, does not qualify me to write a cowboy romance, and neither does living in the middle of farm country. But, it’s interesting to note that Cowboy and Western Romance is having a moment. This is the snapshot that Alex Newton shared in his K-Lytics email.

graph on left showing uptick between 2020 and 2025 of cowboy romance. on the right, a sexy cowgirl and sexy cowboy both wearing cowboy hats

If you want to buy Alex’s newest report, you can find it here. In the past they were $37 and now they’re $57, I believe, but he offers a lot of information. This is not an affiliate link: https://k-lytics.lpages.co/western-romance/. I like watching them but I have a Mafia report from two years ago that I haven’t watched, so it’s pretty obvious I don’t make the time and shouldn’t waste the money.

Authors Guild Webinar
There’s a free Authors Guild webinar that looks interesting that also popped up in my email. It’s called How and Where to Find Your Readers and it’s on Wednesday, August 27th, at 2pm EST. Someone on Threads asked me if there would be a replay, and though the information doesn’t say that there will be (that I could see), they usually put a lot of their content on their YouTube channel. Here is the registration link if you’re interested in attending the webinar: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_z9jduvBMTL-wsm77dcFMjg#/registration You don’t have to be an Authors Guild member to attend.

You can also subscribe to their YouTube channel as they have a lot of content there as well: https://www.youtube.com/@AuthorsGuild

The Anthropic AI Lawsuit
You all might have heard that Anthropic was found to have legally obtained thousands of books and other work from pirate sites such as LibGen and Library Mirror. There was information going around that if your books were included that you could join the class action lawsuit. If. If you had filed a copyright for your work with the Copyright Office. That little piece of information was hidden in the Threads posts and other bits and pieces I read about it, but Craig Martelle was very upfront about it in his Facebook group, Successful Indie Author. I realized it’s because it’s just one of those things people assume an indie author will do. [Cue the Chrissy Teigen meme where she’s grimacing in the audience.]

Applying for copyright was something I planned on doing when I started my pen name and then, I guess you can call them excuses, I lost focus because of COVID, my health, and other things going on at the time. Not to mention price. After paying for what we have to pay for, adding another expense, and one that didn’t seem imperative, was a lot, and I just . . . didn’t. Now I’ll be paying for that along with many, many, many other authors who don’t bother because if whoever is behind this class action lawsuit wins and damages are paid out, they won’t be paid out to us. It’s really a “coulda woulda shoulda” moment, and you can’t go back to retroactively submit your copyright because you have to do it within three months of your book being published. And I don’t even mean that in a skeezy way of trying to become a part of the lawsuit, just simply going back to fix your mistakes. Along with having a membership to the Alliance of Independent Authors, paying for your copyright is probably a good idea. There are so many scammers and thieves out there now. Authors need all the protection they can get. If you want to read more about that, you can find it on the Authors Guild website here: https://authorsguild.org/news/anthropic-ai-class-action-important-information-for-authors/

What’s next for the rest of 2025?
It’s a little early to be thinking about the end of the year, but September is just around the corner, and once the holidays hit, it’s game over. So, in recognizing that, I’d like to try to write another book. I have Bitter Love pretty much plotted out in my head. I’ll have to fill in some blanks as being a “planster” that’s expected, but I know the major plot points. How it ends right now could go either way, not the HEA part, but where they end up, you know. When I write my small town romances, sometimes they stay and sometimes they don’t.

If I can start on Bitter Love September first, I’d have to write 5300 words a week to write a 90k word book. That actually sounds pretty doable, considering in the past I’ve been able to write 5000 words a day, but now with changes at my work, I’m not sure what kind of word count I’ll be able to produce. I have a really difficult time writing on the days I work–my ten hour shifts don’t leave me a lot of time and by the end I’m exhausted anyway–and the days I don’t are filled with chores, errands, and other pesky things that make up life. So, while that 5300 word count cheers me because it doesn’t sound that bad, I’ll have to see what reality lets me do. But that is the goal so we’ll see what happens. Especially since this book might not be that long. There’s no mystery in it, just a bunch of garbage my characters have to deal with, so maybe it would be a nice change if my book came in at 75k words or so. I won’t know until I write it, but I’m not put off by the idea.

I guess that’s all I have for this week. Overall things are good. Health is hanging in there, nothing bad is happening with my car. Pim is a little jerk (I mean that very affectionately) and she hates being alone, but I think we’re all still getting used to each other and there’s a chance yet she could quiet down. I hope she does because having to feed her breakfast around 4am isn’t awesome, and sometimes, like on the days I know I have to get up for work, I can’t always fall back asleep. My son has been good with getting up with her, too, and sometimes when I finally get up, he’s asleep on the couch. Not great, but I love having a cat again, so you just have to deal.

Here’s Pim for the pet tax. She loves that piece of packing paper.

Enjoy the last little bit of August, and I will talk to you next week!

Romanticizing Cheating (In Fiction)

Posted on July 21, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

One of the most talked about things that happened last week was when the CEO of Astronomer, Andy Byron, attended a Coldplay concert with his mistress and HR chief, Kristin Cabot, and got caught on camera.

photo taken from: https://people.com/astronomer-ceo-andy-byron-resigns-following-viral-coldplay-kiss-cam-drama-11775506

Of course, the first thing I thought was, “What’s Astronomer?”

The second thing I thought was, “That’s too bad. They looked cute together.”

The third thing I thought was (as someone who has an HR degree), “Is she going to have to fire herself for fraternizing?”

The fourth thing I thought was, “How can we learn from this from a craft perspective?”

Going all the way back to the beginning of time, we’ve been taught to view cheating as this horrible, vile thing that we should never do, and the responses online validate that belief over and over again. Andy, and Kristin too, were called some pretty nasty names, and the general consensus was that they deserved each other.

As someone who was married for about fifteen years (what is time 😵‍💫) and has since divorced, I never thought it was as clear cut as that. Marriages, relationships, fall apart all the time, and for the most part, it’s not anyone’s business why. We don’t know what’s going on in Andy’s home life that warranted him stepping outside his marriage–he and his wife could have simply grown apart. We tend to need to place blame, automatically calling him a bastard for hurting his wife and her a bitch for dating a married man.

Where does this thinking come from, in a society that celebrates couples staying together for fifty plus years, even though, at the end, they can’t stand to be in the same room together and have slept in different beds for the past thirty. There’s failure in divorce, failure in not “sticking it out.” No matter how miserable you are. Being unhappy is the American Way.

I bring up divorce because everyone thinks that’s the solution. Don’t cheat, have the integrity to get divorced first before you start seeing someone else. And I think, up to a point, that’s true. But divorce can be messy, it can be expensive, not only paying for attorneys but for what happens afterward (I have seen on more than one occasion couples who have gotten divorced but still live together because they can’t afford to move out), and if you have little kids, complicated.

It probably sounds like I’m defending Andy, just another rich white guy fucking around and not liking the finding out part. That might be what he is, and maybe I’ll get backlash for being, if not understanding, a bit sympathetic, at least. But I’m thinking of cheating in terms of, well, how romantic it is, not the kind of people they look like because they did it in the first place.

There’s a reason why forbidden love is a trope, after all.

And done right, readers love it.

In a private group I’m a member of on Facebook, an author polled her readers, asking them what tropes they liked best. I won’t share the group, but she said we could share the results–you have to give her your email address to download the pdf–and you can find it here through Bookfunnel: https://BookHip.com/QDMZAFS (this is not an affiliate link)

Anyway, I was a little surprised by the results. She gave her readers these tropes to choose from:
Billionaire, Alpha, Age-Gap
Cowboy, Small Town, Medical Second Chance, Love Triangle, Cheating
Enemies to Lovers, Arranged Marriage, Secret Baby
Holiday, Workplace, Fake Relationship
Secret Identity, Motorcycle Club, Rejected Mate
Ugly Duckling, Celebrity
Friends To Lovers, Grumpy/Sunshine, Second Chance

I think she got most of them, maybe she forgot Mafia, or even true forbidden romance that can fit into any subgenre. Anyway, want to guess which trope came in first?

Second chance.

But the second was cheating.

That kind of took me aback not only because Andy and Kirstin were the top news story on social media when I downloaded Maya’s reader poll results, but because I have written the cheating trope and was warned there are two different kinds and I would be in big trouble if I chose the wrong one.

One kind is where the characters are married and they cheat with other people to find an HEA outside their marriages. Readers don’t want their main characters to be with other people. So when you write a romance where your characters are already married when they meet and start their relationship, you’re going to have some unhappy readers.

The other form of cheating is when you have characters who were involved with people who were already married and something happens. Characters die or they leave the people who were taken and go on to relationships with characters who are available. They’re still cheaters, but it’s softer somehow, more acceptable.

My rockstar trilogy is full of cheaters. Well, kind of. In Twisted Alibis, Sheppard falls in love with Olivia, who he thinks is engaged. It turns out her fiancé had committed suicide and she still wore her ring out of guilt and lost dreams. He struggled with that, and it affects how he deals with his depression. In Twisted Lullabies, Eddie cheats with Clarissa, who happened to be married to one of their bandmates. Her husband’s murdered, but that doesn’t make it easy for Clarissa and Eddie to be together. Eddie finally confesses to Sheppard, and their conversation is one of my favorite scenes:

“When Olivia and I met, I thought she was engaged. She wore an engagement ring, and I took that at face value as I’m sure many would. I tried to fight how I started feeling about her because I knew it was wrong, but the way she would listen when I talked, the way it seemed she always knew what I needed, how she would wrap herself around me as if she were trying to absorb all my pain . . .” He sighs. “After you and Brock were here and we talked about Derrick . . . I needed her as badly as I have ever needed anything in my life, and I went out to the beach and kissed her. I didn’t care she was engaged, in fact, I blamed him for letting her be here at all. I didn’t care. All I knew was I couldn’t live without her. That’s when she told me. That’s when the paparazzi took that picture of us in the water.”

Olivia sniffles and wipes a tear off her cheek.

Shep stares at the photo, lost in thought. “It scared me, that my feelings were so strong I would try to steal another man’s woman, and I grappled with that for a long time. What kind of person that made me, what kind of person Olivia would have been had she been willing to cheat on him with me. When love is dirty, but you crave it, need it to survive. I suspected Melody was seeing someone, but it wasn’t that she was. It was that she felt she had to hide it. Honesty is important, and she should have told me she was in love with Dalt and divorced me properly. I don’t know what Derrick would have done if you’d told him the truth. It sounds like he didn’t want her. Maybe he would have just let you have her.”

The only way Clarissa was able to escape her marriage was the way things went down, but I say, “Sharyn wouldn’t have let him let her go. She wanted to turn his reputation in the press around, and she did. He went from a rich, rockstar playboy to husband of the year practically overnight. The tabloids loved pictures of them, and I bet Sharyn leaked those herself. I begged Clarissa to leave him, but she stayed because she has integrity. She stayed because she knew she’d made a mistake and thought she should pay for it. She stayed long after Derrick died because—”

“Because she knew Mason’s yours and she wanted to be a family.”

In Twisted Lies, Agatha had been seeing a married man and confessed to Brock, thinking that he wouldn’t be able to see past her mistake. His conversation with Eddie is another scene I loved to write. (Trilogy link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CDQJ28SB)

We look down on cheating in real life, calling people nasty names for disrespecting their spouses, but using cheating as a plot point can bring a lot of complicated emotions and feelings to your story because cheating doesn’t always come from a place of selfishness. People can’t control who they fall in love with, but how they handle that can be classy or trashy.

Astronomer issued a statement, and I wonder after this if Andy and Kristin will stop seeing each other. I guess it depends on if he wants to save his marriage (if his wife will even let him try), or if he doesn’t, if he and Kristin can get past the shame of not only being found out but how they reacted to it.

Astronomer is committed to the values and culture that have guided us since our founding. Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability.

The Board of Directors has initiated a formal investigation into this matter and we will have additional details to share very shortly.

Alyssa Stoddard was not at the event and no other employees were in the video. Andy Byron has not put out any statement, reports saying otherwise are all incorrect. — https://www.mensjournal.com/news/astronomer-breaks-silence-on-ceo-andy-byron-coldplaygate

What’s funny is I think he wanted to be–found out, that is. You can’t go to a public event like that without knowing you’re taking a risk. Even if the camera hadn’t caught them hugging, they could have ran into any number of people who knew them and thought it was suspicious they were together past working hours.

So, where does this all go? Cheating in real life is icky, but cheating in fiction (like the TV drama Scandal) is so yummy we can’t get enough? Is there hypocrisy there? I think a lot of it, if not most, is that when people do it in real life, like Andy and Kristin, we don’t have any context, and when we see it in movies, TV shows, and read it in books, we get all their ~~heartbreaking~~ reasons why.

That’s addicting, and maybe we don’t want to admit it, but . . . relatable.

Humans are messy, and if you write them right, so are characters. To have a full character arc, they need to make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, and come out better people in the end.

Maybe Andy’s full character arc includes resigning from his position and “finding himself” in whatever way that makes sense to him. My characters had a lot of regret too and moved on the best they could.

He might not have chosen to have his affair blasted all over the internet, but I have to admit, sympathetic to his and Kristin’s plight or not, it would be perfect for the beginning of a funny RomCom.

And you can be sure, the next time they meet up, it will be in a private hotel room with room service.

I actually just bought a romance novel that centers around cheating. I grabbed it when I went through my BookBub email newsletter. The cover drew me in and the blurb made me click. If you’re interested, you can find it here:

https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Chances-Cosette-Hale-ebook/dp/B01M146WPF

One lie. One affair. One chance to take her life back.

Audrey Hale has it all—a devoted husband, a dream vacation to the Virgin Islands just days away, and a secret she can’t wait to share.

One moment, she’s holding four positive pregnancy tests. The next, she’s cradling a broken dream—and a gnawing suspicion that her husband’s late nights have more to do with sex than sales.

The worst part? Her best friend—the glamorous, magnetic Natalie— might be in on it.

When one heartbreak leads to another, Audrey is left raw, vulnerable… and searching for truth in a world that’s quickly unraveling.

And the only person who seems to be there for her is Natalie’s husband—Harvey.

He’s off-limits.
He’s furious.
He might be the only one who sees what’s really going on.

As secrets are uncovered and stolen glances become charged, the line between comfort and temptation starts to blur.

Because betrayal cuts deep—but desire cuts deeper.

Monday Author Update: Vellum, Bots, and a New Hockey Romance

Posted on June 2, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

2,289 words
12 minutes read time

spring desk flatlay. tulips, coffee, glasses, pen. keyboard

text says: Monday Author Update: Vellum, Bots, and a New Hockey Romance

Happy June!

Things are going pretty good here . . . I got the proof back for Loss and Damages, but I’m not going to dive into proofing it yet. Just a quick flip through made me realize I forgot to add the page that asks readers to sign up for my blog on my other website and reminds them I have a free book there. I’ll get that put in and I’m sure there will be more after I sit down to read it.

I’m not going to stress over typos anymore considering there’s backlash now if your book is too perfect. Apparently a typo-free book is a sign you’ve used AI to write, which is ridiculous, but so is the accusation by a clueless reader that if you’ve formatted using Vellum software that you’ve written your book with ChatGPT.

Screenshot of review:

Frankie
* The entire thing is Al trash
Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2024
Verified Purchase
Was very excited to read this book. Sapphic Fantasy is far and few in between. The book arrived and I realized there was some weirdness going on with the art on the cover. Try to look for an illustrator credit only to find out the entire production is made with Vellum Al.... cool. I love when a piece of media is entirely stolen and then has the audacity to say that no form of the media may be reproduced. When the entire thing is a stolen reproduction of other people's talent and hard — https://www.threads.com/@the.book.lush/post/DJigP-YslFl

Of course, that reader didn’t know what Vellum even is (and it’s not her job to, but still, maybe she shouldn’t have been voicing her thoughts on something she didn’t understand), and the creators of Vellum have changed the language of the indication that it was used in the book’s formatting. It used to say created with Vellum on the copyright page if you checked the box, and I always did to give Brad Andalman and Brad West credit for creating the software in the first place. But if that’s the way readers are going to be, I’ll uncheck the box and give them credit on the copyright instead. It’s a shame really, because these AI witch hunts are doing more harm than good, but props to Brad and Brad for fixing the terminology after these accusations spread over the web. (Not that I’ll apply it anytime soon . . . I’m about five updates behind because it already does what I want it to do.)

screenshot of Vellum software formatting of the copyright page of my book, Twisted Lies, the third book in my rockstar trilogy.

It seems every day there’s a new accusation and it’s getting to be so it’s really tiring to be online. I get why there’s pissy conflict about it, indies saying “Why should an AI book sell better and make more money than my book that I worked so hard on all by myself” and it’s valid . . . up to a point. People have said that about books that aren’t well-written as well, the same attitude being, “Why would a book that sounds like crap do better than mine?” and it’s a really toxic place for your mindset to be. Not only because competition is the thief of joy, but because quality is subjective, and not everyone reads at the same level. Calling someone stupid for liking a book you don’t feel is worthy of the time or sales is a choice. And maybe that’s not a thought spoken a loud, but it’s there whenever the topic comes up. (How could a reader like that?) There’s room for all books and all reading levels. Is this me defending AI? Not really. Mostly it’s me thinking authors can do what they want. I’m not getting involved like some busybody who can’t mind her own business. I have my own life to live and my own projects to work on. And honestly, all the BS people are posting just makes them look like jealous idiots.

Anyway, so I’ll get to Loss and Damages when I feel like it. Right now, for some reason, I was compelled to reread my rockstars (perhaps to remind myself that book two actually did have a plot), putting in some slight editing changes as I went along and fixing a few typos and stuff I didn’t see because I didn’t have great glasses back then–and I wrote those when I wasn’t feeling good so I was distracted by that. Things like commas that are supposed to be periods, or I found a place where I used a single quote mark to start a sentence but didn’t close it. Nothing major and not many, but since I was reading for fun, I thought I might as well not waste it and if I saw something that needed fixing, I did. I can upload the new files to KDP, but I don’t know if I’ll bother with IngramSpark. I haven’t sold a book through there in years, and it would cost $75 dollars for three books if I can’t find a promo code somewhere. But I don’t like the idea of my books being different on different platforms, so I’ll probably just swallow the cost and tell myself to stop reading my books over, even if I enjoy it, because at some point it’s going to cost me money.

What I really wanted to talk about was my new summer project! You’ve heard me talk about my plans for the next little while–getting Wicked Games ready to go and getting back to work on a series that I started writing during COVID that’s 1/3 completed–but I was inspired by Alex Newton’s new K-Lytics report. If you’re interested, you can find it here and purchase the report for $47 USD. This is not an affiliate link: https://k-lytics.com/sports-romance/.

It really got me thinking about jumping on the hockey trend, though I don’t think it can be called a trend anymore. Hockey romance has been around for a long time and like Billionaires that started as a fluke when Fifty Shades of Grey came out almost fifteen years ago, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. So there is definitely no rush to get it written and published, and well, putting out a hockey romance during hockey season would be good timing anyway.

I wouldn’t bother if I didn’t have plot, and I have no idea where it came from (no, Al didn’t give it to me). All I knew when I started thinking about it was that I had to make my MMC rich to tie him into the Billionaire brand I’ve got going for myself. My rockstars still did well even if they weren’t billionaires, but they’re rich, of course, which fits into that wealthy lifestyle my characters live. Hockey players can be millionaires too, if they’re valuable, skilled, and sign the right contracts with the right teams. They play hard and . . . play hard. But this isn’t going to be some fluffy hockey romcom. No, this book is going to be gritty and dirty because hockey’s a sport that’s rife with sexual assault and domestic violence, among other things. I like to mix up tropes, bend genre expectations, like my FMC not getting pregnant in Give &Take, my a-baby-for-the-billionaire novel, the first book in my Lost & Found trilogy, or my rockstars who never get up on stage to do a concert. I’m going to flip it. My MMC hasn’t put a skate on a rink in twenty years and when he gets pulled back into that world unwillingly, he is a very pissed off man. So yeah, I’m really looking forward to writing this standalone and I’ve already been doing some research, diving into watching documentaries like Faceoff: Inside the NHL on Amazon Prime. Here’s the hook I posted on my FB author page:

puck and hockey stick on ice. the text reads, I didn't want the hockey team my grandfather left me...and I certainly didn't want the woman who came with it.

I’ll need a lot of research because I know next to nothing about hockey and it’s going to turn into that kind of a joke where I have to watch six hours of documentary just to write one believable paragraph. But I’m wondering if this isn’t the kind of passion project I needed to boost some writerly morale, though my King’s Crossing serial suddenly selling is doing that too. With a passion project I’m excited to write and my King’s Crossing serial doing well, I’m actually in a good headspace about my writing right now. I’ve let go of the hopefulness, which I think did me a world of good. All I have going on for promo is some Amazon ads that aren’t bankrupting me. So, I can say (again) that not all my royalties are mine, but anyone who thinks books sell themselves needs to take a Business 101 class because that rarely happens. I knew it too, setting up some ads when I said I wouldn’t bother anymore. If you want numbers, I made $142.00 in May and spent $95 on Amazon ads. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve had some subscriptions renew, like Canva and my Office 365, so if I did all my numbers from January until now, I’m probably still in the red, but I’m not trying as hard as I did last year and the mental freedom is what counts.

To keep up with that mental freedom, I have to really try hard not to think about my publishing schedule. I have Loss and Damages set to be published on September 15th with ARCs going out in July. I’ve had that date set for many months, and there’s no reason to change it. I also have said I would publish Wicked Games in January of 2026, but I would absolutely love it if I could swap that out with Frozen Assets. If I can’t, for whatever reason, I can’t, but if that works out, it wouldn’t mess me up too much as I could schedule Wicked Games for Fall of 2026. I’d still have two books out next year while I finish up my series for 2027. I just hate thinking like that now because for one, I don’t have a business anymore, and that is such a business way to think. For two, it really makes my books sound like widgets on a conveyor belt, and I don’t want to think like that. I never really did, think of my books as products, that is, only when my books were published and I had to figure out a way to sell them, but trying to plan a publishing schedule makes me feel like that and I just want to focus on the writing and not what I have to do when they’re done. I mean, to be honest, I don’t have a business. I have a hobby, one I take very seriously, but it’s a hobby nonetheless. I tried to turn it into a business, but all I did was burn myself out.

There are some things I might never change in my process, like coming up with the cover concept as quickly as I can so I have time to look for stock (it’s easier to find a guy who fits when you have the background you like and the title font in place) or change my mind and start from scratch. So, with that being said, I think I might have my cover done. This will be my first “abs” cover because while I stayed away from skin so I could do Amazon ads, there are just some things that are nonnegotiable and abs on a hockey cover is one of them. I didn’t want an illustrated cover, just because there is so much crap said about Icebreaker, how cute the cover is, but then inside it’s all sex, and I don’t want to mislead anyone. I didn’t want an object cover either because I don’t feel like learning how to make one and I’m not in the mood to hire out. So, he’ll have abs, his head won’t be cut off, and even if he’s hockey, he’s going to blend in with the rest of my backlist.

That’s about all I have. A German bot jacked up my views last week, which made me kind of mad. Messed up my stats for the week. I’m not 100% it was from a bot, but it was just looking at my home page, not a specific post that could have been shared. So, I’ll go with the bot theory and I enabled two-step verification and changed the password to my website. I had a chat with a WordPress happiness engineer who said my website looked fine, and the views died down after a couple of days.

screenshot of stats for may 26 to june 1. highest views were on May 27th at almost 900. Total views for the week were 1.4k

My KC Crowne blogpost has still been getting hits, don’t know how that makes me look when I didn’t bulldoze over her. Someone on YouTube mentioned my post, or just referenced it, I’m not sure, and you can watch it here if you want:

I actually don’t like consuming content about myself, which makes it easy not to read reviews about my books. So if you watch, only tell me if she has nice things to say. Otherwise, I’m good with not knowing. Not everyone likes it when you’re Switzerland, but I just have a lot of sympathy for authors who get caught up in the grind. It’s really a mental health issue, turning to Al to ramp up your productivity because you’re scared of being left behind. That kind of panic hustle is real, and it will only get worse. Since KC Crowne, a couple more authors have been caught with prompts in their books, which is too bad. I really can’t emphasize enough to read your proofs when you order them to check the cover. Even if you don’t ask Al for help, you never know what kind of formatting errors you’ll find, pacing problems that could be corrected since you’re now reading a “book” as a “reader” and typos that you missed on screen. It’s also just a really good time to pull quotes for social media. Yeah, just please read your proofs. Mark them up. Then, if you don’t want to keep them, create a giveaway for your readers who are interested in your creative process.

I guess that’s it. I always go into writing these like I’ll just be quick, then you need half your day to read. Sorry about that!

I hope you have a good week ahead, and I will chat with you next week!

Writing a taboo subject: is it worth it?

Posted on April 3, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

Dictionary
Definitions from Oxford Languages

ta·boo
noun
noun: taboo; plural noun: taboos; noun: tabu; plural noun: tabus
a social or religious custom prohibiting or forbidding discussion of a particular practice or forbidding association with a particular person, place, or thing.
"many taboos have developed around physical exposure"
Similar:
prohibition
proscription
veto
interdiction
interdict
ban
restriction
boycott
nonacceptance
anathema
Opposite:
acceptance
encouragement
a social practice that is prohibited or restricted.
"speaking about sex is a taboo in his country"

When you choose to write about a subject that people consider taboo, you’re setting yourself up from the get-go for readers not to like your work–at least, not that particular project. Incest is a big taboo subject (even today people still bring up VC Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic–a popular book wherein a brother and sister begin a sexual relationship), along with cannibalism, religion/rituals, bestiality, torture, necrophilia, among other things.

What people consider taboo will vary from person to person, and when you write about a sensitive topic, you’re taking a risk that the majority of your readers won’t mind or can get past the topic at least long enough to buy and finish the book.

I don’t find many topics off-putting. I read Flowers in the Attic when I was younger, and reading about a brother and sister having sex was wicked and thrilling (at the age I was, reading about any sex was thrilling, haha! [If you don’t know by that comment, yes, I am an GenXer]). Sometimes a book will catch me off-guard, like Nora Roberts’ Sundown where a character is kidnapped and raped repeatedly throughout her life. I love Nora Roberts and have never had a problem with any of her books. I enjoyed Sundown as well, but I don’t remember Nora being so violent on the page. Still, I wasn’t upset and finished the book, an angsty and quick read for the length it is. If you want an example of ritual animal sacrifice, you can check out her Divine Evil which opens with a little girl watching her father participate in the ritual. It’s a flashback and has to do with what the book is about when the little girl is an adult and goes back to her hometown. I had to Google for the name of it, as I read it a very long time ago. The paperback said it was published in 2009, but I wasn’t reading much then, so it may be a re-release. Yes, I looked and the original copyright is 1992–I’m not crazy after all! Good to know!

I have found while reading both indie and trad books, taboo subjects are best swallowed when they are written well and have a reason for existing. In some of the indie I’ve read, authors confuse violence and shock value with conflict and insert unnecessary violent scenes when, with better writing, they needn’t have added it at all. Alluding to and writing it explicitly on the page are two different things, and you have to decide for yourself if writing it out in gory detail will enhance the story. It may not, and referring to it can suit your purposes all the same.

I’ve only been thinking about this because my trilogy involves cheating, and that, too, is a taboo subject for some people. In doing a brief bit of research before I started my rockstar trilogy, cheating among band members is, perhaps not typical, but it can happen. I’m hoping that cheating in a rockstar romance is considered tropy and not unsavory.

What are some of the things you can do to set up your book to have a better chance sales- and review-wise?

*Warn your readers. I’ve said in the past I don’t need trigger warnings and for the most part, don’t include them in my blurbs. There are a couple reasons for that, one mainly, is the rumor that Amazon will bury your book’s discoverability if you include a trigger or content warning in your blurb. Some bigger authors can get away with that–they have a loyal fanbase and don’t depend on Amazon’s algorithms the way smaller authors do. Amazon can bury your book’s ad, too, so they get you twice if you run ads to your books. Simply saying your book includes sensitive themes may not be enough. What people consider sensitive can vary greatly and being vague in hopes of tricking Amazon may not help. What you can do is add all your triggers to your website and point your readers there in an author’s note at the beginning of all your books. That may be a better way to go.

I use Booksprout for reviews before launch, and I will definitely include a trigger for the trilogy. They are also long so I’ll add that as well.

*Have a reason for including the taboo. Most taboo subjects will have a plot reason for being in your book, but make sure that if you’re writing a rape scene or you’re going to get graphic with child violence or the inhumane treatment of animals, that there is a need for it. Is it a clue in a thriller/mystery? Does the act move the character development forward . . . or backward? Violent scenes are not filler and shouldn’t be used to manufacture conflict.

*Have your characters learn from it. Cheating is actually fun to write about. Characters feel guilty falling in love with a person who is “taken.” They can learn a lot about themselves and other characters when they explore doing something that would be considered off limits. If you’re going to write about something taboo, make sure your characters (and maybe your readers as well) learn from it. Why is it taboo, and how do they justify the act? When is it okay to do it, and when is it not okay? Where is there a line? I love a morally grey character. That’s life, and none of us are perfect. We cheat on our income taxes, don’t correct a cashier when she forgets to ring up an item, don’t return money we found on the ground. Little things that would cast someone in a bad light if someone else found out about it. It doesn’t make us bad people–we have a lot of different facets that make us who we are. A reader will have an easier time reading something like cheating if your characters learn from it, or if there is a really good reason for why it happened in the first place.

I finished watching Daisy Jones and The Six last night, and there is some cheating and some alleged cheating, in it. I don’t want to spoil the book or the show for you if you haven’t read or watched either, but at one point the question came up, if you’re married to someone but are in love with someone else, should you honor your vows? Do you stay in a relationship you don’t want to be in? You never want to be with someone if they think you’re an obligation, and Daisy Jones explored that. In book 2 of my trilogy, Eddie fell in love with his bandmate’s wife. It turns out Clarissa was being abused, and Eddie protected her. She was too scared to leave her husband, and Eddie took matters into his own hands, another piece of the plot.

I’m not sure how well my trilogy will be received, but all I can hope is I executed them well enough that while readers may not condone what my characters are doing, they can feel sympathy toward them.

I don’t have much else this week. I compared my royalties with my ad spend for March, and I came out ahead, whoo-hoo! You really gotta watch those ads. Sometimes they can take off and eat up your money faster than a kid can eat through a box of cookies. I would have to do more math, but I’m ahead by quite a bit this year already, my trilogy doing good things, and my one-night-stand standalone doing well at .99. I think I’m going to leave it at .99 for a while. The FB ad is running with some likes and shares (social proof is always a good thing) and I make page reads off it, too. It can be my “gateway” book into my library for those who aren’t Kindle Unlimited subscribers but want to try my books. People are risk-averse, especially with new-to-them authors. Even priced at $4.99 for a full-length novel, if you’re writing in a series, you’re asking a reader to spend a lot of money on you. So I’m comfortable leaving Rescue Me at .99 indefinitely, I just need to make sure my FB and Amazon ads are running at profit to that book since I only make 35% royalties off ninety-nine cents, or a 1.32 for a full read in KU.

The third book is going well. I’m 19k into it at the time of this writing, but will be farther along by the time the post publishes. I’m hoping to be done with it at the end of this month–I still have my eye on publishing the first one in August.

That’s about all I have! It’s April, and it doesn’t feel like spring, but it will be nice when the weather starts warming up. We have a lot of snow, so I’m praying that the river near our apartment building isn’t going to flood. Not like a terrible flood–it usually does a little every year, but the amount of snow we got in the past couple weeks alone is worrisome. I will keep you posted!

Have a great week, everyone!

Does it matter how long your (romance) book is?

Posted on March 27, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

There was some romance discourse last week, well, maybe not discourse, as the topic was broached by people who weren’t fighting about it (sometimes respectful discussions can happen), but it is worth a look. They were talking about the length of a romance novel, and how long a romance novel really should be. It’s kind of a sticky subject because there are a lot of reasons why romance books are longer than they should be, or, for that matter, shorter than they could be.

In a time where attention spans are short and money is scarce, I can see how someone wouldn’t want to write long novels–and charge for them. People read in bite-sized chunks (Hello Kindle Vella and Amazon Short Reads) and move on to something else. Novellas appear popular these days (I’ll add a question mark because I don’t know that to be true from a reader standpoint) and if you’re a writer and can write two novellas a month, you can build a backlist and readership that much quicker.

My main concern is how people feel about longer novels. You can pat yourself on the back if you write 100k+ novel. It’s quite a feat to be able to pull that off. It’s more extraordinary if you can hold someone’s attention for that long, and that’s the rub. According to the discussion that I peeked in on, few authors can.

I remember when Lucy Score came out with Things We Never Got Over. There was much discussion about the fact that it’s 570 pages long, or over 140,000 words. Does a romance novel need to be that long? And since publishing that in January of 2022, she’s come out with two more in that series: Things We Hide from the Light (February of 2023) which is 592 pages long, and Things We Left Behind which will be out in September 2023. We can assume that book will be equal in length, and that means to read through the entire trilogy, you’re committing to 400,000 words. You can argue that if she’s a good a writer it doesn’t matter how long the books are. But, she also works with a professional editor who would (hopefully) tell her if her stories dragged.

More indies than we realize (or want to acknowledge) work without editors, especially developmental editors that can charge $1,000 dollars or more per manuscript. Indies aren’t getting the feedback they could to tighten up their books, and I get it. When you can’t find a beta reader who will help you for free or trade, many indies go without any kind of feedback before publishing. They don’t get opinions on that subplot, or how much crap they’ve thrown at their couple to extend the story. They don’t know how to pace themselves and bog their stories down with info dumps and add characters that don’t do anything to enrich their books. I’ve also read authors by Montlake (an Amazon imprint) whose reviews say similar things . . . the books were too long, the novel could have lost 100 pages and been a better read. So working with an editor doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll end up with a perfect product.

Is this opinion, or fact?

Does it matter?

The problem is, quality is subjective, and an author sure as hell can’t do anything about a reader’s attention span. Negative reviews can make it feel like it was the author’s fault they didn’t write a good book, when it actually could be the reader who had too much going on to settle in a read something that was more than 150 pages.

On the other hand, a book that’s only 150 pages that’s poorly written can feel like 1,000 pages and I’ve read first chapters that took me all day because I just couldn’t get through them. It doesn’t matter how long or short a book is if the writing is terrible or you don’t care about the characters.

I suppose the answer is you’ll find your readers if you deliver consistently. Over time, readers will come to know what you write, and if they’ve tried you and didn’t like you, for whatever reason, they’ll avoid new books.

I can’t write short. I have three full-length standalone novels that prove that when I was trying to write a novella-length reader magnet for my newsletter. I finally ended up offering the shortest one (77k words) and giving that away rather than keep trying to write something I can’t. This is worrisome in its own way–when you’re told a reader likes certain things and you can’t deliver. I can’t write a book that’s 40k words long, and that leaves me and other authors who like to write long or want to write long with a problem–how do we make sure we’re finding the right kind of readers for our books?

No one wants a review saying our book was “bloated” or bogged down, or even worse, be accused of writing filler for the KU page reads. Like Zoe York pointed out in a tweet thread about this very topic, you get paid the full amount only if a reader reads the entire book. They can “flip” for the good parts, and if they flip to the end you get paid for the book, but what are the chances of that going to be if you bore a reader? If the reader is bored enough, they’ll close out and return it.

A reader can look to see how many printed pages your book is in the product information. Readers who are looking for a certain length can avoid books that are too long or too short for their tastes. I don’t usually do that unless I know for sure it’s an indie book. Some indies overprice their books because they feel all the work they put into their product deserves the inflated price. I’m not going to pay 1.99 for a short story, or 3.99 for a novella. Not when I price my 75k-100k novels at 4.99. Price is a different subject all together and I’m not going to get into it here.

The trilogy I’m writing now is on the longer side and I didn’t intend for that to happen. I would need beta readers to tell me if there’s anything I could cut, if getting my 107k manuscript under 100k is important to me. It’s not–I’m more concerned with all the books being around the same length. I don’t want my first book to be 107k and my third to be 75k if you know what I mean. But since they are longer–not quite that different from other my books, but still longer by about 20k–I wonder if it would be worth adding page length to the blurb. I dislike all the qualifiers that some authors are now putting in their blurbs. There was one book by an author I won’t name who added a paragraph of trigger warnings. While this blog post isn’t about trigger warnings either, reading all those put me off reading it. Life is hard, and I wouldn’t expect fiction not to be. My characters can have very angsty backgrounds, and to add triggers to my books warning readers my characters have . . . lived hard lives? . . . doesn’t seem realistic to me. So adding page length when I don’t even like adding trigger warnings seems too precious. On the other hand, it would save readers from picking up a book they don’t want to invest time in, so it is an impasse, for sure.

If you like scrolling through Twitter, here are the tweets I saw over the weekend. I’m not picking on Zoe. I love her and she really makes me think about the publishing industry and more specifically, publishing romance.

Someone posted a question on this thread and then deleted it, but I think it's a worthwhile question to answer anyway: does KU reward people for skipping editing? Is there maybe less reward in KU for editing a long book down to a slightly less long book? https://t.co/yHhDxVRr6l
— Zoe York (@ZoeYorkWrites) March 25, 2023

Since I'm on a roll, let me suggest that the better arbiter of ideal* romance novel length is not trad publisher shelf space preferences, but which stories have fostered the largest fandoms.

And in contemporary romance, that is not 85k word standalones.

*this isn't a real thing
— Zoe York (@ZoeYorkWrites) March 26, 2023

I listened to a talk once, but I can’t find the video, so I don’t want to say who I think it was because I might be wrong. But even if I can’t remember who said it, it’s worth mentioning. In her talk, she talks about leveling up, and one of the simple things she did to make more money was to write longer books as all her books were in KU. Of course, she’s not encouraging you to book stuff or bloat your books with filler. We all want to make readers happy. We know you can’t create a fanbase without doing that. I just like exploring all sides of a conversation, and if you write 50k word novels and think you aren’t happy with how much you make from KU, I don’t see the harm in looking over your books and deciding to write 70k books instead. But, it is important to look at how you view success and how much time you have to work on your books. Maybe every month is NaNo for you, and 50k every 30 days is manageable and because of your day job and family life, 70k is not. Also, what kind of readership do you have now? Do they want a 70k book or would they be happier with two 35k books? If you don’t have a readership yet, it’s worth exploring what you want to write and what you have time for.

My brand will always be full-length novels. I’ve come to realize I like trilogies–both reading them and writing them. I have a soft spot for standalones but six books in a series will be my limit. If I had a team who could help me package the books, that might be something different, but editing them, formatting them, and doing their covers wears me out and I don’t have the patience to do that often. Eventually, as I publish, readers will know each new release is a full-length novel. For courtesy, since I’m still using Booksprout, I’ll tell potential reviewers this will be a long trilogy. I appreciate all the reviewers and the time they shared with me and my books, but there was one who said Give & Take was too long. At 77 words, it’s one of my shorter books and it just goes to show you’re not going to make everyone happy. So a length warning may be helpful if only to let them know that if they review the entire trilogy they’re signing up for some serious reading time.

That’s about all I have for this week. I started book three of my rockstar trilogy, and I’m so pleased I decided to turn this into a trilogy. It will be a fabulous addition to my library. I love the characters and the over-arching plot I’ve developed. The couples were made for each other, and I’m having a lot of fun pushing them together.

I’ll be working on that book for the next little while, trying to get these ready for an August release. I don’t know if I’ll publish them one week apart like I did before. I don’t have an audience yet, so a rapid release doesn’t do anything for me. I just prefer to have a series ready to go so at least readers know their next read isn’t that far off.

Doing something like this is a lot of work. Sometimes I get discouraged. Sometimes I want to give up just like anyone else. I said something to someone last week I probably shouldn’t have. It’s none of my business how she chooses to run hers. I get frustrated when people don’t put in their time but think they deserve results. I’m not talking about a particular person now, I’m talking about anyone, anytime. I used to be like that. Maybe not entitled, but when I pushed Publish on my first book, I went to bed hoping like we all do that it would be a runaway bestseller. Of course it wasn’t. None of my books have been. I have 16 books out and make pennies a day. Not for lack of trying, and certainly not lack of hard work and willing to try new things. I think the one thing you can do for your business is know what you want and don’t be scared of it. Don’t be scared what other people think of it. If you want to make money, own it. If you want to win awards, don’t let people tell you awards don’t matter. Why you write and publish is no one’s business. Why you quit isn’t anyone’s business (but you can just leave. Stop announcing it every five minutes and just go). Why you keep pushing when year after year you keep seeing the same results isn’t anyone’s business.

I’ll keep writing and publishing and maybe I’ll luck out and have a runaway bestseller. I’ll never know if I quit.

Have a great week, everyone!

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!

Stockpiling books. Pros and Cons.

Posted on August 8, 2022 by Vania Margene Rheault

When the pandemic hit in 2020, I wasn’t thinking about stockpiling books. In fact, I wasn’t thinking much of anything but getting my four-book small town holiday series out and tinkering with an idea about a first person dual POV I wanted to try because even back at the end of 2019/the beginning of 2020, I knew romance was taking a turn in that direct and I wasn’t sure if I was missing a luxurious cruise ship by not following the trend.

I’d never written in first before, and I opened that file on March 18, 2020 at 11:03 PM. I didn’t know it would turn into a six-book series or the most complicated series as far as plot goes I would ever write, but it’s what I spent 2020 doing. (I created the file for the last book on Sep 7, 2020 at 10:34 AM.)

Then, since I knew I wanted to publish these under a pen name to help differentiate them from my 3rd person books, I decided to write a short reader magnet that I could give away as a newsletter sign up. The only problem with that was, I can’t write short, and I had one book that I realized would be better as the first in series, and three standalones I decided not to give away because they were too long. It was toward the end of last year when I realized that I better freaking start publishing because the number of books I had on my laptop was its own kind of anxiety-inducing mess. The amount of editing and production those books required simply made me shut my laptop, or worse yet, open a new Word document and just keep writing, ignoring all the books I had already written.

There are a lot of pros to stockpiling books, but there are some cons, too, and this tweet that’s part of a thread by Zoe York inspired this blog post:

What are some of the pros and cons to stockpiling books?

One of the pros is you have a steady release schedule for months, maybe even years. If I published my series with two months between each book, I would release 6 in 12 months. Not only do you not fall off Amazon’s ninety day cliff, but you also have a whole year to write new books. I also have a couple of standalones ready to go, so I could buy myself even more time by publishing one or two after my series, giving me potentially 18 months to write more books.

I big con and one that could be a dealbreaker for many is depending on how quickly you write, you’re not publishing anything for months, maybe even years. If you’re starting a new pen and don’t need the money from sales, then that might not matter to you. It didn’t matter to me. I don’t make much money with my 3rd person books, and I could afford the time to write. It was actually very helpful the pandemic came along when it did. Everyone was in lockdown doing their own thing, my daughter was learning from home, and I’ve always had the kind of job where I can get words down between busy times. I didn’t feel like I was “wasting” time. I was trying to get through a pandemic like everyone else.

Another pro is stockpiling can be fun. You write a book or a trilogy or a series and you type THE END and immediately open a new Word document. I’ve never been attracted to shiny things, but moving on from one book to the next without thinking about editing, cover, and formatting is kind of liberating in a way. I have a standalone that’s 97,000 words that I started on May 15, 2021 at 12:28 PM that I finished July 6, 2021 at 7:19 PM. And trust me, that is when I finished because I haven’t opened it since I typed the very last word and closed out the file.

A con to that is having a completed book, or books, on your laptop and not doing anything with them. That would drive some people crazy, and as Andrea Pearson used to say on the now defunct 6 Figure Author Podcast, a book on your laptop won’t make you money. (If I recall correctly, that was in response to a question about whether she writes a whole series before releasing the first book–she does not.) Does it bother me to have Dominic and Jemma just hanging out? Ummm, not really? I mean, I should go and edit them and package them up at some point, but as soon as my trilogy is done and packaged, I will be focusing on getting my King’s Crossing series out and I have a couple more ideas for standalones I want to write while the ideas are fresh. It’s good to have a back up book, in case my well ever runs dry, but I’ll edit it when there’s a lull, such as when I just finish something and need to let it breathe.

Another con to swiftly moving on from one book to the next is you don’t spend that much time with your couples. There are some romance authors who market their books like they are talking about their best friends. They write slowly and revel in their characters and plots. They create mood boards and aesthetics, write short stories and other extra bonus content. Depending on how your mind works, you can always go back and do this, but when you’re cranking out words and the minute you type THE END, that couple can be out of your mind making way for the new book.

A pro to stockpiling is that you are guaranteed to go back to an older book with fresh eyes to edit it. I was so proud of the first two books of a six book series (a different series, book one was going to be a standalone) but when I went back to reread, ugh, they sounded terrible. At least with fresh eyes (and lots more words behind me) I could edit them properly. Who knows? Dominic and Jemma could be in the same boat, but luckily, I’ve written a lot more words since last summer and my first person voice has gotten a lot smoother. Plus, while editing my King’s Crossing series, I stumbled upon many crutch words I started using that at least I know of now and can get rid of them.

A big con, and one that gave me anxiety, is you are setting yourself up for a lot of work. Depending on how you stockpile, you could end up with upward of a million words to edit and package. Breaking it down was imperative for me to get any work done, and I tackled three of my standalones first. Standalones are a lot easier to work with, finding stock photos is easier for covers, and the editing doesn’t seem to be so mountainous. In the end, I did turn one into a reader magnet I’m giving away on Bookfunnel, and I have two others in KDP ready to go. The next book I’m publishing is Rescue Me, and I’m really proud of it. I’ll be excited to release it in October.

The main reason authors stockpile is to create a consistent schedule and keep with it. Unless life forces me, I don’t plan to take a break writing because I have such a thick cushion. I love writing and will always work as hard as a I can as time allows. It also helps when it comes to marketing. You can plan the sales and the promos you’re going going to do ahead of time. When Rescue Me comes out in October, I plan to use a couple of free days for Captivated by Her and buy a promo or two to start getting the word out. I’ll have three books available and I hope to get a little read through with those promos.

One of the cons of stockpiling is you can grow bored if you don’t finish a series all at once. I guess you can grow bored if you’re publishing while you write but there is more incentive to finish since you don’t want to have an unfinished series on Amazon. The two I have that are part of a six-book series? I edited them so they don’t sound so terrible, but I’m not excited to finish. I know I should, as I have some of those books’ plots loosely figured out, but I lost my passion for that series and I don’t think waiting for it to come back will help get them done. I should have finished them while I was writing them but I don’t remember now why I stopped. Perhaps I tried to write another reader magnet and got distracted. I know how important offering one is for my newsletter, and that was something I was determined to start since I never had one before. I need to do their covers and get to know them again. I can’t waste two books.

I wasn’t thinking about stockpiling while i was writing. I was just having fun and trying to get through the pandemic. Whether or not I’ll reap any rewards remains to be seen, but there there are lots of pros to quickly building a backlist. I’m excited to see where I am around this time next year.

I’m still playing with covers. I could totally write a dark romance duet. What do you think?

Short Author Update and June Recap

Posted on July 4, 2022 by Vania Margene Rheault

There isn’t a whole lot going on right now. Working a little extra because my money is flying away faster than a snowflake in a blizzard, but everyone is experiencing a little financial crunch, so that’s nothing new. I’ve turned off both ads on Facebook, one for Captivated that was eating up money with no sales, and the other for my newsletter signup/reader magnet. That was a tough one to turn off, mostly because it was working. I have a newsletter list of 220 people–25 having unsubscribed since I started running the ad. But it was working, maybe too well, and it was eating up money through lots of clicks. I’ll turn it back on again when my bills are caught up.

Now that July is upon us, in two weeks I can put my pre-order up for the second book in my duet. Book one isn’t doing so hot, but that’s okay. I’ll figure out a promo next month and see what happens.

I’m 13k into the second book of my trilogy. Yesterday’s words were hard won, and when that happens, I need to close my laptop and do more plotting. When I start a book I have most of the major plot points figured out, but I’m having trouble with this book filling in the muscle to my skeleton as I have often compared my plotting process. So I have to drill down and remember and refine my characters’ stakes, motivations, and consequences and figure out some scenes. The writing will come easier then.

I’m also, for some reason, more sensitive to word count with these books. Book one ended up at 77k, which is fine. I’m panicking for no reason, really, but when I have a tough time getting the words out, thinking of the total word count is always quick in my mind. I can skim through what needs to happen and in my brain and I count 5k or so, which is ridiculous. Everything takes more space when writing everything out than it does thinking about what needs to happen next.

Luckily, I’m not the only one who worries about word count. Audrey has word count anxiety (https://audreydriscoll.com/2019/12/01/word-count-anxiety/) and Karena has some great tips on meeting word count–the outlining tip is the one I rely on most (https://www.spalmorum.com/how-to-stop-worrying-about-word-count-but-here-are-5-ways-of-hitting-your-word-count-goals-every-time/). Terry has a process that sounds a lot like mine–(https://terryodell.com/dont-obsess-about-word-count/), and some people, given that if you indie-pub, just write until the story’s done. Sarra Cannon, creator of the HB90 planning system, also has thoughts on word count that you can read here (https://heartbreathings.com/long-self-published-book/). It’s nice to know I’m not the only neurotic writer out there.

After today, I’m going to start an editing series for indies, and the first guest editor is Kimberly Hunt. Due to poor time management skills (not really, when I start writing a new book, that’s all I care about) I don’t have anymore lined up (but I have reached out to potential editors who were interested in doing the interview) and that is something I’ll be working on after finishing up here. Despite dragging my feet, I am looking forward to the series and helping indies through their answers to my questions polish their novels for submissions and publication. I’ll still be posting updates, but that will take up the rest of the rest of the summer if I’m lucky.

So, I am off to do some more writerly things, some of which may or may not involve wine, since it is a holiday. I hope all enjoy the day, make it productive, and have some fun.

Until next time!

Knowing when to pivot. (What does that mean?)

Posted on February 21, 2022 by Vania Margene Rheault

a picture of zoe york's three books about writing and marketing romance. look here to buy:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082CZDK75 — To check out the series, look here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082CZDK75

I just finished Zoe York’s Publishing How To series, and I really enjoyed the books, her thoughts and experiences on publishing romance, goal setting for your author career, and so much more. She’s been writing and publishing for years now, is a full-time author, and has made a bestselling list or two.

What I’m about to say doesn’t have anything to do with these books–I’ll circle around to them–but lately I’ve realized that when it comes to writing, publishing, and marketing, you can consume all the marketing advice in the whole world, but you won’t get anywhere unless you have a good product, and more importantly, a good product people want to buy. That’s part of the reason why I haven’t purchased Mark Dawson’s Ads for Authors course (comes in at close to 1,000 dollars, and SPF offers it twice a year). If you don’t have the books to back up your ads, your ads aren’t going to do anything.

When I take a look at my publishing history, I was writing good books. I received the odd 1-2 stars most authors do, but on the whole, I’m writing good books. That’s important to me because I do most of the editing and production alone. But something was still off because over the past few years, I didn’t find any traction. One mistake was my newsletter, or lack of one, I should say, and the other was my lack of direction with the books themselves. (I also didn’t understand author brand, but that’s an old discussion we can have on another day.)

It was just this morning when a woman in a writing FB group was talking about this very thing. She was sub-genre hopping and couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t getting any traction. Maybe she’ll believe me, maybe she won’t, but I told her I had the same problems with my own books and decided to niche down.

desk with laptop, plant, and coffee.

be stubborn about your goals but flexible about your methods.

My issue with pivoting is that it took me a long time to realize I had to do it. Some writers who struggle may never understand that it’s not their marketing chops, or their covers, or their blurbs, but simply what they are writing in the first place. Depending on how fast you can write, that can take years. Years that can feel wasted because if you had been writing the right thing in the first place, you wouldn’t still be at ground zero wondering where it all went wrong. But that’s like a chicken and egg scenario–how do you know what’s right or wrong until you put it out there? And what are the metrics you’ve decided to pin that on? Sales? Reviews? I’m nowhere near making a full-time author’s salary–I checked my dashboard yesterday and made 2 cents. (That tells me someone borrowed the book in KU and opened it to make sure it borrowed properly, then went off to do something else. Or they read the first page, didn’t like it, and returned it. If I think to check back, I’ll see if that person read it or not, but that micro-level of caring is not in me and never will be.) Admittedly, those books are old now, and even dropping 10 cents a click in ad spend to those books is probably a waste of money because as we’ve determined, Amazon loves consistency and relevancy, and I won’t be writing any more of those books for the foreseeable future.

So what will make you decide that it’s time to pivot?

At the beginning of the post, I brought up Zoe’s book because in it she says knowing when to pivot and niche down is a personal choice, and it is. You have to look back at your books, where you are, and decide if it’s enough for you. I see indies making money. I want that, too. It’s not a driving force, but financial security is important to me, and who doesn’t want to get paid for doing what they love?

When we talk about pivoting, what does that even mean? It means taking a look at what you’ve been writing, looking at that lack of success those books are bringing in, and deciding to try something new. It can be as simple as what I did–turning from writing “Contemporary Romance” to Billionaire, or doing a full 360 and changing from Christian Romance to Horror. But then that begs the question too–will the pivot be in the right direction? I have no idea. I can’t even say if these new books will resonate with readers until I put them out. I THINK I’ve taken a step in the right direction: billionaire, first person POV. According to Alex Newton of K-Lytics, Billionaires are like vampires and will never die. So, that’s a good thing. But there are a lot of other things that can turn against me: writing style, the tropes I chose to write about, the issues (backstories) I’ve given my characters and decided to tackle in my writing. Changing from Contemporary Romance to Billionaire might not be the magic bullet I hope it is, and right now, I don’t have a plan C. I’m not even sure how long I’m going to give this pivot a go before I decide this writing business isn’t meant to be. I have enough books saved up to publish 4 a year for the next 3 years, so at least until then (because why not publish them since they’re written), but I’ve been skating financially since my divorce, piecemealing paying my bills with scraps of income from various places while giving my writing career a chance to do something, and I can’t do that indefinitely. As Kristine Kathryn Rusch says, there are easier ways to make money. Less stressful too, I bet.

desk with laptop plant and coffee

a pivot is a change in strategy without a change in vision. eric ries

So, if you’ve been banging your head against your laptop trying to figure out why you’re just not seeing the success you want, maybe it’s time to pivot. What is selling right now that’s close to what you’re already writing so you don’t go out of your mind? I’m not saying be a slave to the market, or to trend, though I’ve seen Alex Newton’s indie reports, and trends don’t change nearly as quickly as we like to say they do. I’m saying find something different to write that’s hotter, more niche than what you’ve been writing and see if that works.

All those who wander are not lost, but sometimes you think you know where you’re going and end up not knowing where in the hell you are. That was me before looking at my backlist and choosing to write Billionaire. All of Nothing has made more than all my other books combined, so I feel this pivot was a good choice. Now all I have to do is publish, wait and see.

Fingers crossed.

Monday Update and Editing a Series

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Vania Margene Rheault

Happy Monday!

It’s almost the end of October and there’s nothing better than fall weather in Minnesota! November is always fun because it’s my daughter’s birthday month (she’ll be 16!) and mine, too, but I won’t be sharing how old I am (haha!). I took Thursday off for Thanksgiving and I plan to make a turkey like I did last year–though I overcooked it and I’ll do better this time. There’s only two more months left of the year, but I don’t have any particular plan besides working on a new WIP because I miss writing. I could edit something, but I’m a little tired of that since I just read through and fixed some inconsistencies in my six-book King’s Crossing series and I need to cleanse my palette before more editing. I don’t participate in NaNoWriMo–I don’t need the motivation to get anything done, and the month is terrible for me all around. I do wish everyone who is participating very good luck, and I hope you all meet your goals!

Editing a Series

I didn’t have a plan for today’s blog post, but I did want to talk a little bit about how difficult it is to edit a series–especially if you don’t have help. You would think that after a few years of writing and publishing I would have enough coming in by now to afford an editor, but I don’t and the reality is, I’m not alone. Indies seem to make the same mistakes and that holds us back. Not always–some indies know exactly what to do to get to where they want to be–but others, such as myself, we flounder as we learn “the rules” of the publishing industry. What we don’t gain in royalties is made up in knowledge, but that’s small consolation when we were hoping our beloved hobby would help us pay a few bills here and there, or, at the very least, nudge us into the black after expenses.

Anyway, I have a beta reader who’s going to read them all for plot and consistency issues, and he’s a writer friend who will do it for free. He’s not a professional by any means, and all I can do is hope that I took care of everything on my end and that he catches the rest (if there is anything).

Because this blog is geared for the bootstrapping authors who pretty much do every little thing on their own like I do, I made a list of things that can make it easier on you if you’re editing a long series alone. No, it’s not optimal. I hope you have someone who can help you like I do (even if it’s just one person), but even if you do, you’re going to want to do the bulk of the work yourself to make it easier on the people who do take the time to help you.

Write them as quickly as you can. What was helpful was I didn’t spend a lot of time writing them, meaning, I didn’t leave a lot of time between books. I wrote them all in a smooth sequence that took about ten months because it’s all one gigantic story. There wasn’t time for me to forget anything, and if I had a question, I knew where to look because it hadn’t been that long ago I wrote it.

Use a series bible. I depend on my memory a lot more than I probably should. I remember eye color, hair color, features, pets. As I write, my characters become real people, and it’s easy to remember how they look if they are real to me. That doesn’t always mean things stay consistent, and during this last read through of my series I wrote down eye color, hair color, names, bits of background. You might already do this when you start a series or new book, and I do too, but this series was completed a while ago, and I’m not 100% sure where those notes are. I grabbed a new notebook and jotted down everything that was important. One of the saves I made this time around was thanks to my story bible. I had changed one of the character’s names from Alan to Nolan.

Give it a rest. I take huge chunks of time between each editing read. It’s how I can credit the two saves I found this time around. One save was at the beginning of book one when I mentioned the director of the FBI, but in later books I had demoted him to an agent. It was an easy fix, but I had already read these three times before I caught it. The other big save was when Zane, my MMC, knew something at the beginning of book three, but I didn’t reference in book two how he came into the knowledge. I had to reread almost the entire book to a) make sure I didn’t forget that someone told him what he knew and b) look for the perfect spot in which to write it in. Giving it a rest is probably the most helpful thing you can do, especially if you work on something else while you wait. If you can go back to the story with a clear head, it will feel like you’re reading it, maybe not for the first time, but the story won’t feel so tired.

Trust your reader. You may be tempted to repeat things, especially if your series is long, but all that does is give you opportunity to mess up details. I try not to repeat things, especially if I catch myself thinking it’s for the reader and doesn’t further the story along. Readers are smart–it’s why a lot of authors turn fans into beta readers. They have great memories. I remember one interview with Marie Force on the Self Publishing Show and she said she has betas who read her entire series over from book one whenever she writes a new book because they read for inconsistencies. If you have a beta reader who starts a 20 book series at book one to help you with plot issues, then you better believe she’s got a great memory. Readers picture your characters in their heads how they think they look. It’s not necessary to harp on the physical attributes of your characters. You don’t have to go over plot point after plot point, but if you do mention a gun in a drawer, you better remember to use it because your reader will remember you put it there. If you’re interested in listening to that interview with Marie, you can watch it here. She offers so much useful information, I loved it!

Proof your proofs. Lately I’ve also been listening to my books before I format them and create proof copies. Listening to your novel can point out syntax issues, typos (it’s funny when the voice says a word in a funky way), repeated words, etc. That’s a more micro editing step, and as you can tell, I’m more concerned with the bigger picture–especially when you’re dealing with so many books at once. I like listening to them, and I make the most changes when I take the time to listen. It’s a very time-consuming step.

Reading them in book form does something to my brain, and I find a lot of mistakes, both proofing-wise and content-wise. I binge them like a normal reader would, and since they feel like a book and smell like a book, they have a cover and all the back and front matter, it’s a different kind of reading experience. I used to print them out at Office Max, but that got to be too expensive and wasted paper. Creating a proof copy is cheaper, even if you pay for expedited shipping.

As far as using a software like ProWriting Aid, The Hemingway App, or Grammarly, I find those only work if you already know the rules and can decide for yourself if you’re going to take their suggestions or not. Not everyone has a degree in English, and I get that, but you should also learn the fundamentals or software like that will hurt more than they help. I don’t use any software, nor writing/plotting aids like Scrivener or Plottr. Among the edits I do on screen using plain old Word, listening to the manuscript, then proofing the proof, I hope I take care of most of the issues. At least, as far as I can tell. I don’t have any reviews indicating my books could use another edit (which is a terrible thing for a book–reviews won’t go away, even if you’ve done another editing sweep and your book is 100% better).

The biggest challenge I’ve had with editing these is boredom, and if your heart isn’t in it, that can make you miss things. I’m tired of reading them and taking time between edits helps. Not that I want to give anyone an impression I don’t like my own work. I doubt authors like EL James, Sylvia Day, or Stephenie Meyer are ever caught saying they’re tired of the characters that made them famous. I love them, but it will be nice to write something else while these breathe–again. I was hoping to start releasing them over the summer, but I don’t know how that will work out. I can only work as fast as I can work–especially alone.

Do I have any resources for editing a series? There’s nothing really out there that can help you edit alone. There’s no argument that a second set of eyes can go a long way–as long as that second set of eyes comes with a good memory and can remember inconsistencies and plot issues. The best you can do on your own is to remember your own work. Remember the plot points, remember your character arcs, write down plot twists so you can refer back to them later to keep details straight.

It’s tough not to have help, or be able to afford it. I have a couple of prolific readers in my real life who I know from work, and I maybe could ask them if they would be willing to proof the final copies before I hit Publish, but we’re talking six books here. I don’t know how long it would take to get through them all. It would probably be wise if one of them agrees, and I can afford to pay small fee, say $50 a book. That’s cheaper than you’ll find anyone to do it online. As I like to say, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. I still have plenty to do before I reach that point. Until then, to give myself a break, I’ll write another stand alone. You can never go wrong writing another book!

I suppose that’s all I have for today! Have a great week everyone!

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Vania Margene Rheault

Independent Contemporary Romance Author & Blogger

Category Archives: writing romance novels

Monday Musings: Editing, Book Launches, and the Rest of 2025

Romanticizing Cheating (In Fiction)

Monday Author Update: Vellum, Bots, and a New Hockey Romance

Writing a taboo subject: is it worth it?

Does it matter how long your (romance) book is?

Plot Twist! Turning a standalone into a trilogy.

Stockpiling books. Pros and Cons.

Short Author Update and June Recap

Knowing when to pivot. (What does that mean?)

Monday Update and Editing a Series

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