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Monday Author Update November 2, 2026

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1,423 words
8 minutes read time

Fall-themed blog banner with a cream knit sweater, yellow flowers, coffee, a candle, dried orange slices, and autumn leaves arranged against a light background. Brown text reads “Monday Author Update November 2, 2026.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Black-and-white photograph of a fluffy black-and-white tuxedo cat lounging on rumpled bedsheets, looking directly at the camera with bright eyes, long white whiskers, and a distinctive white mustache.
My boss, Pim

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

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

Reality Bites: Visibility isn’t Conversion

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Blog graphic with a dark charcoal background. On the left, a cute cartoon blue shark wears a black business suit, white shirt, and red tie while carrying a tan briefcase. On the right, beige brush-script lettering reads, “Reality Bites: Visibility isn’t Conversion.”

1,160 words
6 minutes read time

The writing/author community is pretty small, or at least, it feels like it is. You write a terrible review of an author’s book (in the name of honesty, of course) and six months later you’re sharing a lunch table with them at a book con and you’re embarrassed to introduce yourself. Or you mention them in a blog post and they DM you on Facebook and ask you to take it down. (That’s happened to me twice–true story!) It’s very, very easy to think that there are only hundreds of authors around, when, in fact, there are thousands of authors in the world, publishing books every year.

So, after I saw this author accusing Amazon of withholding sales after she had a Reel do moderately well, I thought it was time for a reality check. (Names hidden to protect the entitled.)

Screenshot of a social media post with the author's name and profile picture obscured in purple. The author angrily criticizes Amazon KDP, writing, “If KDP had a face, I’d fucking decimate it,” and questions how KDP can claim there are no reporting issues when one of their Instagram Reels received 10,000 views in 24 hours. The post ends, “I’m so FUCKING sick of their bullshit.” Below the post are 97 likes and 26 comments.
Not even gonna get into how many people sided with her in the comments.
I saw this one after I wrote this blog post, and I. Am. Speechless.

I think, while we write and publish in our little bubbles, that we forget how many books there are on Amazon at any given time.

According to profitable.app, there are approximately 12 million books in the Kindle store right now. While you’re reading this. This stat doesn’t include paperbacks or hardcovers or other marketplaces such as Kobo, Google Play, or Nook. That’s 12 million books your book is competing with if you publish on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. And if you’re enrolled in Kindle Select and your book is available to Kindle Unlimited subscribers, your book is competing with more than 4 million titles.

It’s actually kind of hard to wrap your mind around that. Especially if you’re wide–your book may be available in more places, but you’re dealing with that competition too. To the tune of:

Barnes & Noble / NOOK 4.5 million Ebooks available for sale
Google Play Books Over 10 million Ebooks and audiobooks combined
Apple Books Millions Ebooks and audiobooks; no precise count disclosed
Rakuten Kobo Over 5 million Ebooks and audiobooks combined

What exactly was that author, and many others like her that I see practically every day on Threads, complaining about? That her marketing wasn’t turning into sales and blaming Amazon for it? After reading those numbers, it’s not hard to see why. Readers have an enormous amount of choice, and it only gets larger every day.

When you put a piece of marketing in front of a potential reader, lots of things happen behind the scenes. Readers can fall in love with your quote/snippet, your character’s bio, your trope list. They can look up your book and buy it or borrow it in KU. I agree that’s the optimal outcome and the one I prefer too. But lots can happen besides that. A reader can fall in love with your piece of marketing, look up your book, and decide the blurb is flat or the price is too high. (That actually happened to me the other day. I saw a quote graphic on Facebook that I really liked, looked up her book and saw that her ebook was $9.99. I can’t afford that and clicked away.) Or your book is part of a series and they aren’t looking for a series to read right now. Or the opposite is true, and it’s a standalone and they were looking for a long series to read to get them through to the end of the year. Or, which is brown sadness water like a cup of decaf coffee, a person sees your piece of marketing . . and scrolls by.

Instagram doesn’t discern which of those actions a reader participates in, only that someone saw what you posted. There are no guarantees there or anywhere.

Especially since–and this is the part we don’t like to talk about–you could have a fabulous piece of marketing and your book just isn’t up to snuff. Bad cover, confusing title, the “look inside” full of typos. I mean, we really don’t like talking about that because that brings us around to AI books or trad books that are super popular that authors say sound like garbage. But when you’re looking at YOUR catalogue and wondering why readers aren’t buying YOUR books, it’s worth it to take an honest look at what you’re asking people to buy.

Nonetheless, I understand why we want someone to blame. It’s really, really hard out there right now. There’s too much choice, people are broke, and if readers are like most of us, they already have TBR lists that are so long that they could read until they died and not have to buy another book. So it’s easy to blame Amazon because they’re letting the AI books on their platform, Amazon acknowledges reporting delays and that KU page-read totals aren’t finalized until around the 15th of the following month, and everyone already hates them anyway because their slice of the pie is too big and there isn’t anything we can do about it.

But, despite all that there is wrong with Amazon–and I’m not blind or stupid, I know that there is a lot–I think it’s worth remembering that even though only something like 2% of people who say they want to write a book actually do, 2% of that number is still a really big number.

If you’re lucky to get the kind of visibility that author is getting with her Reels, remember that visibility isn’t conversion, and that sometimes you can do something about it (change your cover, refresh your blurb, put your book on sale for a bit and see what happens). Not always, and I understand that. I’ve experimented with a few other books on Reels, and some of them did well but the views didn’t turn into sales. If you have a large backlist, you have the luxury of experimenting. If not, all you can do is keep trying and hope the books you’re marketing eventually catch. No one said publishing is easy, and it really does seem to get harder every day. Keep trying and keep writing. It won’t be a consolation, but Wicked Games, the romantic suspense standalone I published in May of this year, has started to sell okay since I started sharing snippets on Reels. But that book only exists because I still wrote it and published it even when my other books weren’t selling. You can tell me to fuck off. That’s okay. I would have said the same thing to myself last year too.

This post is a little shorter than my usual ones, but they don’t all have to be 2,000 word monsters, either. So I’ll try to be good with what I’ve said here. Take a look at the top 100 books in your genre. How many of those authors do you know? Have you heard of? There are a lot of authors not on social media quietly making bank and keeping to themselves.

I don’t fault you if that’s your dream.

It’s mine too.

I’ll chat with you next week! Have a lovely Monday!

Monday Author Update

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1,020 words,
5 minutes read time

A fall-themed graphic featuring a cup of cappuccino with heart-shaped latte art on a teal saucer, resting on a rustic turquoise wooden table. Golden autumn leaves decorate the foreground and upper-right corner. Elegant gold script on the left reads “Monday Author Update.”

Hello, and happy October! I hope September treated you well! Time is going by so fast, it seems crazy that we only have three months left of the year, and of course, those months are packed.

My trip to Florida was fun! Of course there are things we would have done differently now, but all in all, we had a good time and I don’t regret going. We haven’t tallied up how much it all cost yet–I’m scared to open my Discover bill–but with my health, I have no idea if or when I’ll ever get to do something like that again, so it was worth the experience. I felt okay for the most part, though I had some iffy moments here and there. I could have felt a lot worse, so I’ll take what I can get. But I can say that my days of doing something like that and not worrying about how I feel are gone.

I had all my reels created and saved in my drafts folder on Instagram, and I didn’t miss posting once. I’m pretty proud of that, considering how much work it took to make sure I had enough to last me the entire trip. I made reels for both Wicked Games and King’s Crossing because I was reluctant to lose the traction I’d gained for both my standalone and the serial. I posted reels from places like the parking lot at Epcot, the parking lot at a Cracker Barrel, to a beach in the Florida Keys. May Zuckerberg reward me for my tenacity. Just kidding. My sister only got annoyed once, but it was toward the tail-end of the trip when tempers were getting a bit short and we were all about ready to go home anyway. All told, the trip might have been a day or two too long, but when you spend that kind of money and go through that kind of hassle, you want to make it worth it. There weren’t any issues with our flights, and I thought we might have consequences winging our plans, but my sister managed to get us reservations at the DoubleTree Resort in Key West two hours before we drove onto the island. I think it helped we were there toward what would be the off-season, and I’m thankful not planning ahead didn’t cause any problems.

Since I’ve been back, I started editing Bitter Love, and I’ve been working on the cover. While I was in Naples, Florida, I announced on Instagram that my publishing date for that book would be January 26th, 2027. For a while now, I’ve been hinting at giving it away, and I don’t want to lie to my followers, so I will. But it will be for shorter than I originally thought. My attitude has changed since reels started helping me sell books, and I don’t want to throw away a book that I’m proud of. Giving it away isn’t throwing it away, I know that. I’ve had My Biggest Mistake for free on my website for years now and have given away over 2,000 copies. But I want to give Bitter Love a chance to make a little money, especially since it will be in KU.

I’m still playing with the cover, and I found a couple that works beautifully with a background that I was super lucky to find. It will definitely be a change from the all-male cast that I have on my covers now, but I really like the look of them and no one is keeping track of the choices I’ve made since I started my pen name. I’d like to put a “special” cover on the books I’m giving away, and I could do the single guy for the giveaway and the couple for the published cover, or I could flip it. I’m not sure yet. It depends on how brave I am to do something different with the backlist I’ve tried so hard to curate.

So that’s what I’ll be doing for the rest of the year. I’m almost done doing the final edit, then I’ll listen to it (I don’t think I’ll ever be able to cut that step out of my process) and proof the paperback proof. I make a lot of changes when I proof the paperback, then I order a new one to make sure all the changes didn’t mess something up. It takes time, but I have plenty, and I won’t have an ARC period to work around. BookSprout is completely on my shitlist (no offense to the reviewers who actually tried) and I won’t ever pay to use them again. PenPinery was a disaster, so there’s no point in trying them again. Books can sell without a lot of reviews. Since I started pushing it with Reels, Wicked Games has sold 30 ebook copies and the equivalent of 210 books in Kindle Unlimited page reads. It only has 18 reviews on Amazon and only 21 reviews on Goodreads. So if you have a book with a low number of reviews, don’t let it deter you from promoting it. If your ad copy, cover, blurb, and price catch a reader, that reader will take a chance.

After that, I’m going to write the rough draft of my Alpine Divorce idea. I really really really wanted to write a book around that concept, and I plotted something out a few months ago. I’m itching to get to it, and that cover may also have a couple on it. We’ll see. I like the idea of branching out, but it’s a little scary too. Doing my own covers makes it especially nerve-wracking since a lot goes into the background and finding the right couple. Finding a couple that will work is a lot harder than finding a single man in a suit, I can tell you that.

I think that’s all I have for this week. Next we’ll I’ll do an indie news roundup. There’s some things going on that I’d like to talk about.

Have a great week, everyone!

When Something Finally Starts Working… Then What?

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1,810 words
10 minutes read time

Dark teal blog graphic with the words “When something finally starts working… then what?” in large white text beside a smartphone displaying the Instagram Reels logo.

I almost stopped publishing.

Anyone following my blog knows that. I was doing too much work for too little in return, and for a really long time I was discouraged enough that I was thinking about walking away and not putting my books on Amazon anymore. I was still going to write–write for myself, write to give my books away–but I wasn’t going to write to publish. Ten years, 30+ books, and most days I wasn’t even making a dollar in royalties.

And the sad part was, it wasn’t because I wasn’t trying. I used Written Word Media newsletter promos, I tried ads. I tried a “real” newsletter (as opposed to my blog now), and I even gave away a full-length novel as a cookie. I did free book blasts and rapid released. I wrote the next book. Always wrote the next book because that book could be the one that changes everything. I did everything they tell you to do. No one could look back at the past ten years I’ve been publishing and say that I didn’t try.

Then I saw someone on Threads talking about Instagram Trial Reels, and I thought, meh, why not. I had already donated blood to TikTok so this wasn’t going to be much different. Eight weeks later, I’ve earned the equivalent of two of my paychecks.

Posting a Reel every day worked.

And now I’m in this strange place where after ten years I found something that moved the needle. After swearing up and down and sideways that there wasn’t a way to find traction or to level up.

It messes with your head.

I kept going back to thinking there was something I had done wrong, and when you produce books all alone, there’s plenty of room for error. Books that could have been edited better, covers that could have looked better. I’ve always edited to the best of my ability, and while your best at the time is always going to be your best at the time, it might not be the best there is, and that can hurt you. I’ve rushed releases and published covers that I didn’t like. Did any of that set me back? Maybe, but when I was advertising and pouring so much money into Facebook ads, quality is only half the problem. You have to get your books in front of readers first. Then they decide if your book is good enough to buy.

With this experiment, I’ve been really lucky. Really lucky and I’m not pretending that luck doesn’t play a huge part in this. I started doing snippets and hooks of my King’s Crossing serial. It’s darker than most of my other books, and the snippets where Zane is after Stella and he wants to kill her for betraying him do really well. I think that being on the fringes of “dark romance” has helped catch some of those readers, not to mention, the content is great for Reels. Especially since I don’t put sex in my snippets. I don’t want my account flagged, and posting murder danger and angst has worked so far. So, I feel like I had books that were geared for Reels and I have six in my serial, which is complete, so that’s another lucky thing to add to my list of lucky things. The covers are okay, most dark romance covers are object covers, but I like men and so far that hasn’t seemed to bother anyone.

I tried doing Reels of Twisted Alibis, the first book in my rockstar trilogy (mostly because I like the read-through concept), but even though I had a few Reels take off, those books didn’t sell, so I stopped. That’s another lucky thing, I guess. To know when to quit. I started doing snippets of Wicked Games instead, a standalone I call “King’s Crossing lite,” and after a couple of Reels that got really good views, that book started selling too.

But here’s an interesting thing: None of my backlist is moving. Which means readers aren’t exploring what else I’ve written. Obviously, no one has time to make videos for every book in their backlist and I have no desire to try to push a boulder up a mountain, either. I keep coming back to something Bryan Cohen said while I was doing one of his Amazon ad challenges so many years ago: advertise the books that sell. Not all of them will hit, so don’t waste your energy on the ones that don’t. And it’s true. I’ve done everything to get my Cedar Hill Duet to go, especially after I re-edited them and redid their covers. They’ve always had a lukewarm reception with anything I’ve tried to do with them and sometimes you just have to walk away.

It’s not hard to see that my King’s Crossing serial is going to be my bread and butter. The other books in my backlist don’t really compare to the fucked-up plot and those abused characters.

This leaves me in some kind of a strange limbo. I’ll keep doing Reels for those books, using the same hook and snippets (I try to mix up the b-roll and there’s plenty on Canva to choose from so it’s not too hard) over and over. I don’t do Reels for books four through six because I don’t want readers to like Gage and Zarah and then realize there are three books before them they have to read first. I’ve had readers ask if they can skip book one, and I’ve had to say no. I don’t know if that influences their buying choices or not. And I’ll keep doing Reels for Wicked Games, at least until I have another new release. I don’t know how well Bitter Love will do, and I’m hoping that if hockey is still trending next year (and I think it will be with the second season of Off Campus coming to Prime, HBO doing the second season of Heated Rivalry, and Netflix picking up Icebreaker) I’ll try Frozen Assets and Cold Mercy when they’re published.

Under all this, though, is the fear that one day this will stop giving me the results that I’ve already come to optimistically enjoy (trust me, it didn’t take long LOL). At some point, it will, right? I’m going to Florida this week and for the past three weeks, I’ve been making a “Reels stash” so I have them made to post while I’m gone. I don’t want to break the consistency that I’ve built. I started posting on July 25th and haven’t skipped a day. I know some of my “success” is posting consistently, and I see that in view bumps of older Reels when I post something new. I suppose that’s not a surprise, but I don’t think consistency is something authors take seriously enough. On the other hand, it’s difficult to consistently do something that consistently produces nothing. When I was running Amazon Ads, and to some extent, posting on TikTok and not being able to escape their 200 view prison, I saw that too.

And then you have the platform itself, and we learned that terrible lesson with TikTok. I saw creator careers crumble overnight. Over the years I have said similar things: Don’t plant your vegetables in someone else’s garden. And I still believe that, even if you can’t help it. I don’t have a “real” newsletter anymore and I haven’t gotten any new signups on my blog. I’ve gotten over 800 new followers on my Facebook Author Page, but that only gives Zuckerberg more slices of my pie. My views and visitors on my author website have gone up, though, and so has my follower count on my Amazon Author page, so that’s something at least.

A change will happen, at some point, and all you can do is hope for the best and be prepared for the worst.

To finally have an audience for (some) of my books is surreal to say the least. Interest in something I’ve written after ten years of struggling to be seen.

Where am I going to go from here? Keep doing what I’m doing. I actually like making Reels because I’m not stretching myself thin. I don’t use a service like Authorloom, and I’m not interested in posting 10-30 Reels a day. I post two every day: one for Wicked Games and one for King’s Crossing. At first I decided not to do Reels for Wicked Games while I was gone, but the bump in sales was too much to resist, so I spent most of the weekend making extras. I know how lucky I am that making Reels is easy: writing the hook, finding the snippet, and writing the caption takes time and practice if you want to snag a reader’s attention. I have the time to make them and I also know that not everyone does. There were a lot of things that came together to make this work, and I would never discount any of them.

But I think through all this, the biggest takeaway for me was that I wasn’t tired or bitter enough to try one more thing. If you’re discouraged, it’s easy to think that nothing will work so there’s no point in trying. I could have tried Reels a long time ago, but I was resentful that it was just another thing to put on my list of shit I had to do. Then after seeing so many authors say they worked, I was just like, Fuck it. I’ll try it too. There was no harm in it besides a couple of lost hours, so I wouldn’t be out much. It took me a few Reels to get into a groove that worked, now making them and posting them is part of my daily routine. Just like writing this blog on Fridays. You do it long enough and it’s a part of your business.

Things will change. They always do. I’ve seen a lot in the past ten years.

I could end with something pithy, but I’ve philosophized enough here in the past couple of years. But I can say this with all the honesty in the world. I will always keep writing. I love putting characters through hell so they reach their happily ever afters. Even if I’m the only one who will read them.

If you want to take a look at my Reels, you can find them here: https://www.instagram.com/vaniamargenerheault/reels/ Trial Reels are hidden, but I started putting the majority on my regular profile because I was getting more views there.

I will be out of office this week and I won’t have a blog post for Monday, September 21st. Behave, and I’ll tell you how my vacation went. 🐚🐬

Have a good week, everyone!

End-of-July Author Update

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1,666 words
9 minutes read time

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It’s the end of July, which means the summer is two-thirds over. It’s going by so fast, but I’ve done a couple of things like take a road trip to Bismarck, North Dakota with my sister and daughter, and we drove to a town forty-five minutes from here to go to their zoo. We have a couple of other things we’d like to do, like go to another town forty-five minutes away in a different direction and play lake tourist there, and possibly go to the zoo here in Fargo, ND, though it’s smaller and more expensive. We didn’t go last summer, so that’s on our maybe list, and if it works out, it works out.

This week is terrible with things to do, like my daughter’s follow-appointment for her wisdom teeth surgery she had done last week, and my own dentist appointment for a cleaning Thursday afternoon. My son has a dermatology appointment that same day and adding all that to the normal grind of life, maybe you shouldn’t try to get a hold of me until Sunday because there’s a high possibility I’ll be a quivering lump of jelly on the floor come Friday morning. Which is too bad because I have to work.

But, sometimes stuff is just crammed together and there’s nothing you can do. The good news is August should be slower, and my main goal is to finish Cold Mercy. Only because my sister, daughter, and I are planning to go to Florida for a week in September, and it would be nice to get it done so I can put it aside mentally and enjoy the first vacation I’ve had in over seven years. My daughter hasn’t been on a plane since she was about ten (she’s twenty now) so she’s also looking forward to it.

Cold Mercy is coming along, and I’m happy about that. I’m enjoying writing Trevor and Celina, but as I’ve said, I don’t have any plans to publish my hockey duet (that I’ve decided to call Black Ice) as of yet. I’ve actually been hunting down couples on DepositPhotos for Bitter Love, just because I think a couple would fit better than a single guy since it’s a small town second chance. So, I’m doing a little bit of everything, and I have a hockey standalone planned after Cold Mercy because I didn’t want to let all that hockey research go to waste.

After bumping into a Threads post about trial reels on Instagram and the easy videos she was making, I decided to give it a try. After posting a few, I can tell you that I like how simple they are to put together and that there isn’t a 200 view dungeon like there is on TikTok (as far as I can tell). That alone is a motivation and confidence booster, because back when I was on TikTok, it really sucked to put an hour into a carousel for it only to get 130 views or whatever. The only thing that tripped me up was figuring out the editing tools, but watching a quick tutorial on YouTube took care of my biggest annoyance. Because I still have a lot of TikTok hooks and Kindle screenshot slides, I’m going to try to post a reel every day and see how it works.

Do I think I’ll go viral and sell lots of books? No. Do I think I’ll go viral at all? Probably not, but I’m not focusing on numbers either. Do I think I’ll sell books? That’s another “probably not” but I was a little sad when I had to get rid of my TikTok account–I felt like I was actually reaching readers with the likes and saves–and this is an easier alternative. Like TikTok, they want you to do as much in-app as possible, so I’m not assembling the whole video in Canva. Here are my quick steps if you want to try it:

Film or find a b-roll. I didn’t even know what that was last year, haha. I filmed my bookshelf and my laptop with a cup of coffee, but so far I haven’t used them. Right now I just go to Canva, choose an Instagram Reel canvas, and find a video that kind of has the snippet vibe. Like the one I posted today–it’s a snippet of Rick finding Devyn at his construction site zip-tied to a support beam. So I found a video of a snowy, city street at night. That’s all you really need. I have no plans to show my face right now, but that could change. I don’t really care either way as long as I do my hair and makeup first.

Make a Kindle screenshot of your snippet. I fake those. I use an Instagram post-sized canvas and just copy and paste the text over from an ePub. To make a “highlight” I use a Square in Elements, change the color and size, and make it transparent. I don’t have all my books on a real Kindle, so this works for me.

Book excerpt from a romantic suspense novel. After finding Devyn unconscious, the hero calls 911, struggles with not being able to carry her to safety himself, and holds her hand the entire ambulance ride to the hospital.

I still have a fear thing left over from TikTok, and I mark out the naughty words. I don’t know how Instagram likes swear words and sex, but I’ve always gone more angsty in my snippets anyway so I don’t think I need to worry too much about that.

Write your two sentence hook that will go above your snippet. I still see some authors using the X, but Y, formula, like “When he falls first, but she’s off limits” kind of thing, so you’ll have to play around with what works for you.

Write your description. I write a quick couple paragraphs that I put in my Mac’s notes app, then I can copy and paste it over on my iPhone. Don’t forget the title and where they can find the book. I use keywords instead of hashtags, since that seems to be the trend right now.

Put it all together. I go into Reels on my phone, and use the b-roll I chose from Canva, add my snippet, add the hook with their text tool, copy and paste the description, add music, and I’m done. Some authors will add a “cover” to their reel, but honestly, the woman who showed us her views in that Threads post didn’t have covers for hers, and I’m inclined to just leave it and see how a simple reel without a cover works first. I’m still in the “experimenting and having fun” stage, so I’m not going to complicate it unless I have to.

Instagram Reel showing a dark, snowy street at night with a page from a romance novel overlaid. The text reads, "She disappeared without a trace. He was terrified he'd find her too late." The excerpt shows the hero calling 911 after finding Devyn unconscious and holding her hand in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

I was missing posting on TikTok, so thanks to Jessica for the motivation!

Another thing I did was revamp my FB author page banner and my website header. Since I no longer consider myself strictly a billionaire romance author, I thought it was time to change it up. I also have never made myself an author logo, so I played around in Canva and came up with something that might be a little too pink, but I like for it now.

Soft pink watercolor background with blush flowers framing the author name "VM Rheault" inside a geometric outline. The graphic includes the tagline: "Billionaire romance, small-town love, and everything in between."

That takes care of my backlist, my small town, second chance that I’ll be publishing next year sometime, and the hockey romances that I’m writing now. Those banners can just stay there for however long since I won’t be changing it anywhere to announce a new release.

Last month I teased I would put my Cedar Hill Duet for free, and I did that. Both of them are free until Wednesday, and if you were wanting to grab them or just download them to support me (thank you!) here’s the link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B1PV65WD

Dark gray promotional graphic with subtle floral accents displaying the romance novels Captivated by Her and Addicted to Her by VM Rheault. Large text announces: "Free for a Limited Time!" with the dates "July 24–28."

I didn’t do much for them except boost a post on Instagram and send a real newsletter to the few subscribers I still have. These are older books, but since they have new covers and they’ve been re-edited, I thought I’d promote them and see how they do. They’re free until Wednesday, July 28th, so if you know of anyone who would want a billionaire romantic suspense duet, you can point them that way.

I’m also putting Rescue Me in a romance book blast next month. I’m to the point where I just want people to see my books, download them if they think they sound good, and maybe read them if they ever get around to it. That’s not me being meh–I know how long people’s TBR lists are. Mine is the same, as I’ve been downloading free hockey books lately if I see them pop up in my Freebooksy newsletters, so I understand that someone downloading one of my books might not read it for months or years, if ever. I’ve stopped thinking about sales, really, and I might do a free blast of one of my trilogies next. Do a special one-day sale of all of them and see how many downloads I get. I think it’s nice to give them all away instead of just a book one. It’s just how I’ve been feeling, at least.

That’s about all I have going on. When I have a second in the evening and I’m too tired to write but it’s too early to go to bed, I’ve been watching the new season of The House of the Dragon. If you like small-town romance shows, a new season of Ransom Canyon just released on the 23rd on Netflix, and I’m wondering if I should rewatch the first season again before diving into the second. We’ll see. There are some evenings when the day hasn’t beat the shit out of me and I still have the energy to write, so I don’t watch too much TV, but it’s nice to have something to look forward to when my brain is mush.

I hope your summer has been going well so far. Do you have anything you want to get done before spooky season starts? Let me know!

Until next time, have a great week ahead!