Monday Musings: ARCs, Goodreads, and Writing While You’re Sick

Posted on August 11, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,906 words
10 minutes read time

I’ll tell you a little story. In our city, our Walmart is located in a poor neighborhood. I would imagine when they built it, they didn’t intend for that to happen, but as the city grew, it became a poor part of town. Since then, theft has increased. You can tell it’s increased because of the way they treat their customers. They have security walking around their store (I know who he is because I worked with him many many years ago when I was checker at K-Mart), they lock up everything that has value, from laundry detergent to pregnancy tests, and in the cosmetics department, you have to pay for anything you want before you leave. They don’t let you pay at the main checkout counters anymore.

They treat you like you’re going to rob the place the second you step foot in their store. And you know what? It sucks. It sucks being treated that way. I mean, I get it, they probably do lose thousands of dollars in product every year, and that will continue to happen as things get more expensive and companies don’t want to pay their employees.

The sad part is, I’ve seen authors treat their ARC readers this way. Changing one word in each copy to “catch” someone pirating, watermarking their copies, making them sign NDAs. Sometimes we forget that we need them–ARC readers don’t need us. Treating them like they’re guilty before they do anything is kind of, I don’t know. I left another Facebook group the other day because I got into a discussion with someone who was trying to prevent theft. At first she said her post was about ARC readers then she changed her story and said she was doing a giveaway on Instagram, mostly, I think, because I told her treating ARC readers like they’re guilty before they even do anything is nasty and unnecessary. No matter how you’re giving out copies of your book, treating readers like they’re going to steal from you will only make you look petty and mean. Your book will get pirated. The potential is there for it to get stolen, but the stories I hear of that happening? Other authors are doing the stealing, not plain old, every day readers who want to help you.

I’m glad I left that group, but I’m sure I’ll see it again. I don’t like being treated like I’m going to do something before I’ve done it. I don’t like being accused when I’m innocent. And neither does anyone else. If you feel that strongly about protecting your work, don’t give out ARCs. Don’t do giveaways and don’t publish because the second your book is on Amazon, it will get pirated.

And as Forrest Gump says, “That’s all I have to say about that.”

Once again I had to go through the wonderful process of contacting Goodreads to move Loss and Damages from my “fake” profile to my “official” one. I don’t understand how my “fake” profile isn’t allowed to exist, but it does, and every time I publish, I have to contact Goodreads and have them move my book. This time I contacted support rather than a Librarian and they actually took my “fake” profile down, so maybe the next time I publish a book it will move over correctly without me having to do anything. They were great about it and did it in a couple of hours. I should contact a Librarian and change some of my old covers too, but dealing with Goodreads is a necessary evil, and I try to do it as little as possible.

I’ve been re-editing some older titles, and I think I mentioned that in my last blog post. Since then I finished Faking Forever a couple days ago. Now I’m reading it over just because I made so many changes that I’m looking for mistakes in my edits.

I’m trying to think back to when I was writing that book, or Rescue Me for that matter. Most of my books I wrote between 2020 and 2024 were written while I wasn’t feeling well. I wasn’t myself, dealing with my lichen sclerosis when I didn’t know what it was, getting a hysterectomy that I’d find out later wouldn’t help and only cause me post-surgery issues, and breaking up with my fiancé who did nothing less than catfish me into thinking he was a decent human being. I look back at that time in my life, and I just wonder if those things didn’t effect how I wrote, because I have to say, Rescue Me didn’t sound too terrible, but Faking Forever sounded like shit. My word choices, my writing style, it all sucked, and I can really tell that I wasn’t in a good frame of mind. I just wasn’t.

When I was re-editing Faking Forever, I practically rewrote the whole thing. Not on a plot or character arc basis, but on a sentence and paragraph level. I took out over 1,000 words when I re-edited Rescue Me, and I took out almost the same in Faking Forever. It makes me sad because looking back, maybe I shouldn’t have been writing. Though, I don’t know what I would have done with myself if I hadn’t. Those four years I was undiagnosed, my doctors lying to me, prescribing treatments that wouldn’t help, I was in a really bad place mentally. I had anxiety. We were going through COVID and lockdown and I was trying to support my daughter who started tenth grade virtually.

I’m feeling better now. In 2024 I got a diagnosis. I stopped taking the medication that had side effects. I stop drinking the tap water that was making me nauseated and messing up my digestion. Most days now I don’t think about how I feel physically. I can push what’s left into a corner of my brain and ignore it. But in doing so, that leaves my mind open to a lot of other things, and I can see in my writing how stressed out I was.

This makes me feel horrible, because in 2020 I started my pen name in an effort to do everything “right.” I wanted to turn my books into a career, but I sabotaged myself and starting a pen name or trying to do any kind of “real” work not feeling well only backfired. I have a lot of books out. My Lost & Found Trilogy. My Cedar Hill Duet. Those are the first books I published. Since I published them, I’ve edited them, but I edited them when I still wasn’t feeling well, and well, unless I read them again, I have no idea how they would sound to me now.

I can safely say that my other books are okay. I just reread my rockstars and I like how they sound (except for a couple of typos here and there that are normal). I’m lucky I did the final sweeps of my King’s Crossing serial when I was feeling good. That would have been a monster of a project to re-edit and I’m confident I don’t have to do that. Rescue Me and Faking Forever are fixed, or close to it. I’ll edit A Heartache for Christmas after I upload new files to KDP for Faking Forever, just in time for the holiday push this year. Then, maybe I can feel in a good enough place to write new work. I felt good writing Wicked Games earlier this year. I edited Loss and Damages (coming out next month) when I was feeling good.

Where does this leave me? I’m cleaning up my house, literally and figuratively, but there’s a lot of time gone by. I don’t want to say wasted. I can’t. Writing was there for me when my world was pretty much falling part, for lack of a better way to describe it, but I don’t want to sound melodramatic either. I can write new books knowing I’m giving my best to the story and the characters and nothing is holding me back or distracting me.

A friend told me to give myself grace. That if my writing is better today it’s not only because I’m feeling better but because I’ve put a lot of words on the page. That might be true. I know I learned over the past year to spot some writing tics that I’ve been able to avoid in newer work. I’ve learned to relax, not only just to enjoy the writing, but my writing style and my voice. Who cares if I use “get” or “put” or “takes” or a little telling slips in there sometimes? My writing sounds stilted because I was trying to avoid garbage words, and honestly, with the books out there that are selling like ice cream cones in 90 degree weather, you’re better off just saying “fuck it” and write in a freer manner than trying to conform to rules that will only make you sound like cardboard.

But this also circles around to my not having an editor. I’ve broken probably one of the most important rules in publishing. Not even just indie, but publishing in general. There are a lot reasons why I haven’t. I mean, I used to, back when I first started, but my productivity was so much that I would never have been able to afford one for every single book anyway. And I’ve had this argument with myself and others before: an editor can’t teach you how to write. They can only make better what you’ve given them, and if you give them garbage, you only get better garbage when they’re done.

Likely, an editor wouldn’t have been able to do much with Faking Forever. It was my voice, my style as a whole, that had problems. Fox’s and Posey’s character arcs are solid. The plot is fine. It just read like crap and I’m not sure what an editor could have done. Marked every sentence and suggested I rewrite it? And even if that had happened, I’m not sure I could have. Not how I was feeling.

So, I guess the best thing I can do is move on. Write more, enjoy the process now that I can. Celebrate my improved health. Go back if I feel like it, and I probably will at some point. Re-edit my Lost & Found trilogy and my Cedar Hill duet. Those would be the last books I’d need and then I could say all my books are okay. But I don’t want to be re-editing forever either. I’d like to write something new, but I’m going with my instincts and right now after getting Faking Forever out of the way, giving A Heartache for Christmas one final read will make me feel better. I like Evie and Sawyer anyway, so going back won’t be a hardship. I’ve read bits and pieces since I published them and I already know that book doesn’t sound like Faking Forever did. Maybe I was in a particularly nasty frame of mind when I wrote Faking Forever, I don’t know. All I can do is take the good from that time in my life and leave the bad.

I’m still getting used to the restructuring my work did last week. Only time will tell if it will effect how often I can blog, but I love sharing bits of my life and news with you so I’ll do my best not to let it impact me too much.

Have a good week, everyone, and I’ll chat with you later for sure.

Three Things I’ve Stopped Doing (and Three Things I Always Will)

Posted on July 28, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

2,645 words
14 minutes read time

Things change in indie publishing. Some quickly, like Amazon guidelines, and some take years to shift, like marketing trends. I’ve been in this game for a bit now, longer than a lot of people I met when I first started out, but shorter than some of the tried and trues I knew who were doing this for years already when I first created my Twitter account.

I have found the longer you stay in the game, the more data you’re going to collect (if you’re smart and keep track). What works, what doesn’t. What did but doesn’t anymore. There are some basic things that will always have merit like publishing consistently, having a website, and, in most cases, not genre-hopping if you want to build an audience. But there are some things that just don’t work anymore, like just simply publishing and watching the royalties roll in as they did during the Kindle goldrush days.

So, I thought I’d share the three things I’ll always do and three things I stopped doing. As the years go by and I hang in there, this list might change, but these are the conclusions I’ve drawn so far since I published my first book in 2016.

Three things I’ll always do in my publishing business:

Finish a duet/trilogy/series before release. I’ve blogged about this a few times, as for most authors this is a Catch-22. Some readers now won’t read until a series is done and they can binge, but an author is reluctant to write more unless they see interest in the first book. What will always convince to me to finish is the fact that if your series is never done, it will never get the readers it could if it was finished. Books don’t expire. In the digital landscape they can sit on a virtual bookshelf for decades. Indies make money on older titles all the time, but you are ensuring that you won’t if you don’t finish. My reasons go beyond the money, even beyond author courtesy and reader habits. I finish out of a sense of integrity for myself and my work. I mean, I don’t publish as I go because I have anxiety over consistency issues that I couldn’t fix if my books were already out in the world. I’m not that good of a writer, so I need to be able to go back and double-check until I’m satisfied. But I also just couldn’t walk away from a world and characters I created. I loved them or wouldn’t have created them in the first place. I’ll always stay true to that creative spark and finish what I start.

Marketing in a way that’s sustainable to me without feeling guilty. That means letting go of the idea I need to be on social media. I don’t like thinking of a hook or a theme and making a graphic and posting. I don’t want to make videos for TikTok even if I have gotten better at it and it doesn’t take me that long. I still post every once in a while so if a reader stumbles upon my FB author page or my IG profile I look like I’m still alive, but otherwise, the constant advice that I need to be posting all the time I will happily ignore. The fact is, a lot of authors don’t have the money or don’t want to spend the money on marketing. I understand that, but paying for ads and for newsletters like Freebooksy and Fussy Librarian is my way of reaching readers without worrying about algorithms or coming up with content and the best way to present it. If I run an FB ad, that’s my limit, since you do need a hook and a graphic that will make people click.

I understand that in a perfect world, an author will use both paid and free tools to market effectively. But when mental health comes in, not to mention time and finances, each author has to make the best choices for them. Even if that’s not posting on socials, not paying for marketing tools, and only joining in a free, author-driven book blast once a year. You have to take a look at what results those methods are bringing in and if you’re okay with that. After a lot of soul-searching, I am okay with breaking even or losing money. I didn’t start publishing to become rich and famous, and that’s okay because I never will be. (I still play the PowerBall sometimes though.)

I will always buy my own ISBNs. This is kind of a cheat, because I already made this decision, and four years ago I bought a pack of 100–after I had already bought a pack of ten and went through them. It cost as much as my rent (at the time–my rent has gone up considerably since then) and I was sweating bullets, but I charged it and paid it off after a few months. I have been called privileged for being able to do that, and you might think I’m privileged to be able to afford ads and paid promos, too. I don’t feel privileged, living paycheck to paycheck, depending on the rent money my kids give me every month, and I still have to charge bigger purchases, like the new mattress I had to buy a few months ago for my back pain. I have a small budget for ads and don’t pay myself a wage out of my royalties. Every penny I make on book sales gets put back into my ~~business~~ hobby. I think that’s another reason authors are hesitant to pay for things like ISBNs and ads. They don’t always make their money back because they don’t write to market or their covers are bad, but I have never seen any industry besides indie publishing where people think they can start a business and not spend any money.

Not everyone will agree that buying ISBNs is a valid expense, and that’s okay. Amazon may not be around forever and neither may IngramSpark, though chances are good they’ll still be here in my lifetime at least. But, I wanted to protect my work under numbers that I paid for and now I’m the publisher on record for my titles. That means a lot to me. I protect both my ebooks and my paperbacks, even when the general consensus is you don’t need an ISBN for your ebooks. I still have quite a few numbers left, even using two a title, and well, I don’t think I’ll need to buy anymore. Obviously, buying ISBNs is a personal business decision but I have never regretted mine.

Bonus Entry:

I will always be a member of ALLi. This is something that I thought of last minute, but I’ll always be a member of the Alliance of Independent Authors. As someone running a business, I think it’s important to be part of an organization that will have your back. I mostly joined so I would have help if Amazon ever closed my account. There are a lot of other benefits too, like discount codes on formatting and publishing services, and I save a little every now and then if I have to update a file at IngramSpark. While it seems like a waste of money on the outside, paying for something that you don’t use (like an old gym membership that’s on autopay) it will be there whenever I need it and in these days of scammers and thieves, having some who’s in your corner is worth more than what they charge for a yearly membership.

Three things I have stopped doing since I started publishing:

Building and sending out a newsletter. Last year when MailerLite screwed me over when I was trying to make my newsletter compliant, I said “fuck it” and shut my newsletter down. I didn’t want to search for another newsletter aggregator and I exported my listed and imported it into my author website. I decide I would turn my newsletter into a public blog, and so far, things have been going okay.

There are a lot of disadvantages to this, to be sure. I can’t offer “bonus content” because what I post goes to everyone. Segregation of an email list isn’t possible on WordPress, nor is culling my subscribers. They have to opt out or my list is stuck with them. I can still force people to give me their emails if they want my reader magnet, but I would have to pay for that privilege on Bookfunnel and that’s not where I want to put my money right now.

So, as far as newsletters go, my blog is still sent out in email form but posted on my site and it will show up in the WordPress reader. People might think I’m crazy for giving away a book without strings, but what’s a book? I can always write another one. Kind of like when your hair stylist does a crappy job. Your hair will grow back. Eventually. Books are a dime a dozen and My Biggest Mistake has served me well. I’ve given away over a thousand copies, and because the back matter in all my books advertises this free book on my website, I’m afraid I’ve trapped myself into giving it away forever. My only ask is you subscribe to my blog, but that rarely happens. Still, I prefer the laid-back approach I’ve adopted since I’ve been working on not taking my books so seriously. I’ve given myself permission to relax, especially in the evenings after a full day. I’ve started watching Lucifer, because, you know. Tom Ellis.

This is one of those things that may change, but I’m not sure what would prompt me to move my list again. I like what I’m doing, and because I’m comfortable with WordPress, maintaining it isn’t a nightmare. In fact, I just refreshed the header, colors, and font on my author page. I hadn’t since I set it up and it looks nice. If you want to take a look around, you can find it here: vmrheault.com.

I’m getting rid of the hard back matter sell. A long time ago in a romance marketing room on Clubhouse, I heard the advice to do the “hard sell” right after the last paragraph of your book. There were all these little caveats, like you couldn’t even use a spacer or a hard enter because that would “force” the content on to the next “page” on an ereader. It was advised to put your call to action (CTA) practically right after the last period, and I did start doing that along with many many many authors. When I look back at my older books now, I hate it. I hate it, hate it, hate it, and I’ve been going through and getting rid of it. Why? Because after I have just read an amazing book, I want to sit with the happy ending, I want to sit with the characters who touched my heart. I don’t want to be yelled at to join a mailing list or to buy another book. So, while I was re-editing Rescue Me, I got rid the immediate CTA to go to my website. (I’ve always pointed people to my website and not a landing page, and that saved me a ton of headache when I stopped using MailerLite.) I didn’t get rid of it completely, but it’s on its own page now. Ebooks are flowable and don’t have pages, but I think a reader has to “flip” to see what else is in the back of the book after the content ends. I’m doing Faking Forever now, and along with updating my list of books, I’m also getting rid of the hard sell. I didn’t it do it on my new releases and that is a trend I’ll stick with. If readers loved your books they will find a way to stay in touch. Like moving my newsletter to my blog and cutting back on the number of books I’m publishing every year, I’m just going to ease up and stop trying so hard. Because you know what? It didn’t do that much anyway.

I’m not adding subtitles on my ebooks. That was another really popular thing to do, and I even wrote a blog post about it. I guess this goes along with the hard sell, and I’m not going to add subtitles to my ebooks anymore. I’m going to start letting my cover, title, and blurb speak for itself, and make sure my categories and keywords I choose when publishing do the heavy lifting. Adding a subtitle to your books was a very trendy thing to do to drive discoverability, and you may think that with market saturation that not doing it anymore might be going backward. But, Amazon doesn’t like it, either, and honestly, now I think shoving mini-tropes into a subtitle just looks desperate and ridiculous. So, as I update my books, along with taking out the hard CTA at the end, I’m going to be taking off the subtitles. It will make my buy-pages look cleaner. Am I telling you not to do it? No. Unless you really do want to be careful around Amazon, then maybe I would rethink that, but if you like to take chances and want to pack your subtitle full of mini-tropes, then you should still do what you want to do. This is the new and improved relaxed version, remember?

Bonus Entry:

I won’t ever use an illustrated cover. Obviously I was thinking about my hockey novels and the kind of covers I wanted to put on them. I don’t fault anyone for using an illustrated cover but I have just come to realize those are not for me. I understand the reasons why authors turn to them. There’s more of a selection when scrolling through vector art than there is real stock models and if you’re one to go with the trends, you don’t want to feel left out and think you could be leaving readers on the table. But at this point, illustrated covers would be at odds with the brand I’ve built for myself over the years, and if I can find what I need and there are still real people on the kinds of books I’m writing, then I don’t see any reason to change. I also have never, and probably will never, write a story light-hearted enough where an illustrated cover would fit, so instead of moaning about that, I’ll lean into my strengths and keep putting hot, sexy men on my covers.

When it comes to indie publishing, or just publishing in general, the ability to pivot and be flexible is probably one of the biggest assets you can have. Things change at a snail’s pace until all of a sudden everyone is talking about it and doing it a different way. What’s especially interesting is when things used to be the standard (like subtitles on ebooks) and that changes to something that no one does anymore.

I have extreme FOMO, I really do, but this year I have managed to brush a lot of that aside, for the most part because I think I know everything there is to know and there isn’t going to be a magic piece of advice that will push me to the next level. And that’s okay. Accepting that is actually freeing. I can do what I want, write what I want, and be happy with it. After the few years I’ve had, that is a really great place to be.

Next week I’ll give you a rundown on what I’ve been doing. July is almost gone, y’all. I hope you’re making the best of what’s left of summer.

See you next week!

Monday Author Update: When you can’t decide what to write next

Posted on May 5, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,491 words
8 minutes read time

I was going to post something else today, something about writing “rules” and publishing “rules” mostly because I saw an author on Facebook who was complaining about sales who definitely wasn’t making choices I would be making, but alas, no one wants to read about rules. And, well, no one wants to hear what they’re doing wrong, either, which is fine. Some people need to learn from their mistakes, and some don’t realize they’re making mistakes, blaming their lack of sales on other things. *Cough* Like the Amazon boycott. *Cough Cough*

So, that doesn’t leave me with much except my own updates, of which there are not many. I’ve been listening to Loss and Damages, and Word has updated their read aloud feature since I used it last. The process is a lot smoother and it’s really easy to listen now. It can be tedious because it takes a lot of time, but I catch syntax errors, missed words, repeated words, and typos. I catch enough that I would never skip this part of the editing process. I’d much rather listen to my manuscript than feed it chapter by chapter to ProWritingAid, even if I have been pro-Al in the past. I will still Google a grammar question here and there, but even if I miss things, I like to be in control of my own editing. It’s slow going, I can only listen to about thirty pages at a time, but it’s worth it. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past few days since I took a break after I finished writing and doing a couple read-throughs of Wicked Games. I’ll be able to write Loss and Damages‘s blurb, format it, and order the proof sometime in the next couple of weeks, and that book will pretty much be a wrap.

Next I’ll maybe give Wicked Games another read-through, though I might let it sit for a while longer yet. I was going to jump into a series I have that’s 1/3 completed, but thinking about tackling another big project like that really wears me down. I never used to be one to shy away from work, but I’m still not feeling well, I’m always tired, and it doesn’t sound appealing. I’ve been reading Dea Poirier’s Last Girl to Die, and in that book, a detective goes back to her home town to solve a murder. It got me thinking about my own books and tropes, and besides a book in my Rocky Point series where Logan goes home to Rocky Point for a wedding and reconnects with his high school girlfriend, Ivy, I’ve never written a “back to my hometown” book.

I started putting the pieces together about a guy who left his small town after high school graduation to strike it rich, and he does. He gets called home because his grandpa is dying and there he bumps into his high school sweetheart. She knew it was better for him to leave after graduation and pretended to hook up with another guy to force him to go. I was thinking about all the shit he could step in going home, and the characters started grabbing me. It would be another standalone, but I realize now that I’m inching away from true Billionaire romances. Giving characters money isn’t the only thing that defines the genre, and shoving my characters into small towns doesn’t fit, no matter how rich they are. I turned to the billionaire genre and the alternating first person POV hoping it would springboard a career, but lately I’ve just been writing “Contemporary Romance” that would have better fit under my full name written in 3rd person. I don’t know what to do about that since I don’t want to write in 3rd person anymore. I could keep writing in first, but that would also possibly mean a shift in what my covers should look like. I’m seeing more covers with couples on them in general, but I’ve been watching my brand so carefully that suddenly throwing a couple on a cover would look very out of place. I’m between a rock and a hard place. I whole-heartedly believe in writing what you want, but I also believe you need to package those stories correctly or they won’t meet reader expectations resulting in readers not finding the books they want and/or poor reviews.

Along those lines, I have to stop looking at that series as a drudgery or I’m never going to want to write the rest. I could start looking at the books one by one instead of the series as a whole and maybe that would help my mindset. Maybe I’m still burnt out getting my King’s Crossing books done then jumping right into editing those Rocky Point books, but whatever the cause is, I’m not wasting the two books already written so I better just put some lipstick on and get my shit together, as Elizabeth Taylor is rumored to have said. Whether I’ll do that before or after this new standalone remains to be seen. It just depends on how loudly this new set of characters speaks to me. On the other hand, already having a standalone planned after my series is done would be like a little treat to myself for working so hard. It was very nice writing Wicked Games, no pressure at all to set up other books or having to think about more than one cover.

Speaking of series, my King’s Crossing serial isn’t lighting the world on fire, but I am happy to say that readers are making it to the sixth book. That’s always a gamble, writing such a long series, especially all at once instead of publishing as you go. I will always finish a series that I start just for the personal satisfaction and closure, but it’s nice when it pays off. I tried running an FB ad to it, and while it was getting clicks, sales and borrows didn’t keep up with ad spend and I paused it. I have a couple of Amazon ads running, some are auto placement and some are category placement, and that’s the only thing pushing my series right now. Well, any of my books. If I’m selling other books that aren’t my King’s Crossing serial, it’s because readers found my FB author page or my IG account or they’ve read me before and they’re reading other books. That’s about it. I was thinking of buying a BargainBooksy, since Cruel Fate is still .99, and seeing what that does. My Fussy Librarian didn’t do that much, more than if I had done nothing, but still. A BargainBooksy Romantic Suspense feature is $72.00, and it would be nice to think that I would earn that fee back but it doesn’t always happen.

I’m also going to run a giveaway of my paperbacks and the mug I made. If I run my giveaway in conjunction with that, maybe it would help a little. I have no idea. Here’s a picture I took for the giveaway.

I’m still teasing the giveaway on my FB page. I’m going out of town this week, Monday through Thursday (if you read this on Monday I’m probably on the road), and I didn’t want to run the giveaway while I’m gone in case something happened and I can’t fix it. I’ll do all of that when I get back and I’m available to post about it.

That’s about all I have. Life would be super if I felt better, but a lot of people can say that. If I had access to better doctors, I might even go back to see if there was anything else that can be done, but I don’t trust the idiots where I live and driving five hours to see someone who knows what they’re doing isn’t feasible. I was driving back and forth last year and it wore out my mental health and my wallet. It’s been nine months since my last appointment and in some ways I’m feeling a lot better and in some ways I’m not. I don’t know if, in the ways I’m not, that’s even treatable, but like I said, figuring that out seems like it would be a lot of work. I might just end up with a, “You’re old and this is your life now,” diagnosis that would just be depressing to hear or something that could possibly be, if not fixed, made better, through surgery, but I’m not letting myself get cut open again. I think that’s what caused a lot of this mess in the first place.

Next week I think I have an author interview scheduled, and if something happens with that, I’ll just let you know how my trip went and hopefully I can tell you I’m done listening to Loss and Damages.

I hope you all have a wonderful week ahead!

When the Words Stop. What then?

Posted on March 31, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

2,015 words
11 minutes read time

picture of a land in a drought. text says. when the words stop — Yes, I do know it’s ironic that this blog post is about words drying up and this blog post is one of the longest I’ve ever written.

I haven’t written anything in days. Stalled, I’ll look at my manuscript, edit what I have (again), get to the end, and do something else.

Whatever the reason for it is, I guess that’s not really the point because this isn’t a post about writer’s block or a missing muse or trying to find motivation when there doesn’t seem to be any around. This post is mostly to just mumble through some thoughts on what you do when you call yourself a writer but you’re not writing.

I see this a lot actually, authors who try to hang on to the #writingcommunity by the skin of their teeth because it’s the only place they feel like they belong. They post about the books they’re reading or the books they’re trying to write, bouncing around from manuscript to manuscript hoping for a spark of inspiration, talk about the games they’re playing (a surprising number of authors are also gamers I’ve found), anything to stay connected. Anything, except writing something and publishing/querying it, as writers are often expected to do.

The deeper you’re ensconced in the writing community, the harder it is when suddenly you’re not writing. I see this too, authors taking their blogs down, taking their websites down, Facebook author pages, Instagram profiles. Even their books.

Back when I was still drinking a lot and kind of bitter, I wondered what I’d do if I stopped writing. At that time I was thinking about stopping because my books weren’t selling, and I just wondered if maybe I should chuck the whole thing. Now if I think about it (with a clear mind), I don’t think of completely stopping (and take culpability for my sales or lack thereof), but I think it would be difficult to stay as connected as I am dropping down to a book a year. The level of my involvement in the indie-publishing space would surely take a hit as it’s really really difficult to maintain a blog about something you’re not doing anymore–especially a blog as active as mine. Four times a month at around a 1,000-1,500 words a post is a lot of content. Since I cut down on listening to podcasts, reading nonfiction books on craft and marketing, and watching webinars, my content has gotten repetitive and stale. Lots of my posts are author updates, and if I’m not making any progress on a WIP or not actively participating in the author/indie-publishing world, those updates will be full of nothing and pretty much useless.

I mean, just because I haven’t written for a few days, that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop completely and fade away into obscurity, but it does make me wonder how far I can step back while giving value to this blog and to my readers. And not just me, how anyone who does step back can contribute to the writing community in a meaningful way. If that’s what you want to do, and I get that not everybody does.

Plus, I’m coming at this from an indie helping indie standpoint, something that I truly do pride myself on because I like helping other authors in a time when everyone wants to be compensated for every little thing they do for you. But it’s doubly concerning when you’re not writing and you need or want to update your books’ readers. What then? In past blog posts I’ve suggested recommending other books, but that only lasts so long before your newsletter stops being about you and just turns into a curated list of books you enjoyed reading.

Then you have to take a look at the money you’re spending to stay connected. Lots of authors don’t pay for their websites and they’re on a free newsletter plan. But software like Canva can get a little expensive if you’re not using it regularly, and subscription services like Booksprout and Bookfunnel aren’t worth keeping if you don’t need a review and delivery service. Some of that I’ve locked myself into because all my books have back matter that directs readers to my website where they can download My Biggest Mistake through Bookfunnel. That’s too much back matter to change and I would rather keep paying that than edit all those files (and pay to do it, too, on IngramSpark).

I’m caught in a spider’s web, but it’s not a bad place to be. If eight years ago someone would have told me the position I’d be in now, I’d probably say I’ll never stop writing and shrug off any warning. Out of anything that I’ve “tried” this “hobby” is my favorite and even if I’m not writing as much as I used to, I’m content.

So what to do then, if you’re a writer who’s not writing? You can always support other writers and authors, but eventually that would get old. How long can you cheer for someone doing what you want to be doing? I mean, I assume you still want to be doing it otherwise why not shut everything down and never look back? I’ve known people who have done that, unpublished their books, taken down their socials and disappeared. In the days of pen names, it’s pretty easy to do. Not that their reason was that they wanted to stop writing. Life can get hard and writing as a hobby is the first thing to go. Or some say “forget it” when they don’t see the sales they want, realizing this might be a little harder than they thought, and moving on to things that don’t need so much time/money/energy. Writing is a hobby after all, unless you’re making a living wage and depend on it to pay bills. It’s rather a depressing realization, the thought that where you are is probably where you’ll always stay. Some can’t handle it. Work smarter, not harder, but even that doesn’t help. Writing to market doesn’t help, writing and publishing quickly doesn’t help. So, yeah, I’ve had friends disappear, and I just wonder how much courage it takes to completely shut down and walk away.

When I was trying to get my newsletter up to compliance and I unknowingly knocked down my website for two days, I can still feel how sick I was inside. Luckily, I pay for a plan that gives me access to tech support, and the WordPress chat was able to explain what I did and get my website back up in only a few minutes. I get 20-50 views of my Canva paperback book cover tutorial a day. I was saddened to think of the people who tried to read it and couldn’t. Even though that was a long time ago, I still hope that they tried again or heard in a group or something that it was back up. So yeah, my websites and blog means a lot to me, and so does my newsletter and so does my reader magnet because I’m proud as hell of Brady and Allie. [https://BookHip.com/CMSVSNK}

I didn’t stop writing for good. I’m not sure if I could ever do that. But going for so long without writing anything and not feeling bad about it (well, that’s not totally true or I wouldn’t be writing this post) does give me pause and makes me think about what I would do if I didn’t have this in my life. I wouldn’t still try to be part of the writing community. There would be no point. I’ve made friends that I would probably still chat with, but I don’t know how long it would last. When you met because you’re both writers, after you strip that way, you’d need something else to build your friendship on.

We like to say our lives are full of seasons, chapters, however you want to split up your life, and my past chapters are still visible in the people I followed on LinkedIn and the groups I joined on Facebook. Even some of my friends there are from my HR days, and there’s no reason to keep them on. I bet I could lose a good twenty people if I unfriended my old community college friends, teachers, and connections I made through the Fargo/Moorhead Human Resources Association. And before that I was running six miles a day, but I think between then and now I’ve been able to get rid of most of that. Every time a group that has to do with running or nutrition pops up on Facebook I leave or unlike the page. I bet it would take a long time to get rid of my writing chapters. Eight years of newsletters and Facebook groups, friends, and connections. Where would I go from here? I’ve got twenty, maybe twenty-five years left on this earth, not too many more because I’m already tired and don’t think that I’ll be spared the cancer that has appeared in my family in various ways, but if you leave something behind, something inevitably takes its place. A new job perhaps, if my mental and physical health could handle the pivot. I’ve been with my job for twenty-four years, and at my age, changing careers wouldn’t be impossible but nothing I would look forward to.

So I guess all in all, this is a really long post on how would I fill my time and if I could do something else and not look back. I envy authors who have other hobbies like needlepoint or baking. Nothing like that interests me, in fact, knitting or crocheting would probably make my carpal tunnel worse than it already is. I could just go back to reading, but I’ve turned my writing hobby into content I push out into the world, so if all I did was read or watch TV I’d need to turn that into kind of a review thing or I wouldn’t feel like spending my time doing that was worth it. Which probably isn’t healthy considering doing an activity just for the sheer enjoyment of it is the best reason to do it. Hustle culture is real, y’all.

I could say it’s interesting to think about, but it really isn’t. It’s a little scary. Of course, you can use that fear and turn it into motivation, but then you’re writing for the wrong reason. You shouldn’t do anything out of fear. I’ve said that plenty on this blog. Don’t make decisions on your writing business because you heard something and you’re afraid. Always make the best choices for you, and if there are repercussions later, then deal with it. You have no idea of the opportunities you could be missing.

Even if I just do a thousand words a day, I need to finish this book. Then I won’t have to actually write anything new for a long time. I have Loss and Damages to edit and package and then the book I’m writing now, Wicked Games, would need the same treatment. After that I have those two books in my next series to edit, probably rewriting some of the first one to cut out the number of books I had planned. Book three in that series will be the next thing I’ll need to write from scratch, and that might not be until this winter. Though, I don’t want to start dreading writing, either, or I might as well just call it. I never understood people who forced themself to write, as if they needed to hang on to the #writingcommunity above all else. Life is too short to force yourself to do something you don’t enjoy. And I do enjoy writing. I do. There’s a saying that goes something like “I like having written,” which is true too. I love going back and reading what I’ve written during my last writing session, but everyone knows you can’t read what you’ve written if you haven’t written it. It’s a conundrum we writers face every day.

Now it sounds like I’m babbling, and my Word icon at the bottom of my laptop screen is mocking me. Time to publish this post and switch over to Seth and Avery. I have the whole day in front of me. Let’s see after such a long break what damage I can do.

Enjoy your week!

Thursday Thoughts: The world is a large place

Posted on February 13, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

917 words
5 minutes read time

When I get up in the morning, I have a routine. I go to the bathroom, start a pot of coffee, and go out and feed the squirrels, bunnies, and the crows if they come. I have a bowl I use and fill it with cat treats (for the crows) bird seed, and peanuts in the shell, and toss it outside in my apartment complex’s parking lot. There is an empty parking spot and the animals, because we live in a quiet building, don’t mind picking around there for food. Anyway, so I toss the food out while the coffee drips, go inside and pour a cup, and scroll social media for a few minutes before I shower.

I always see some goofy stuff, some Amazon hate, politics (of course), the Cat Distribution System at work, that kind of thing. Today I saw a post that said (paraphrased), that if you’re bummed about sales there’s a Stuff Your Kindle Event going on and that could be why your sales are low.

I mean, I get it. I’ve gone through my own pity parties before (it seemed like mine went on for all of 2024) and I can get behind whatever you have to tell yourself to feel better. But, lying to yourself also does your books a disservice. The world is not that small that a Stuff Your Kindle Day would hurt your sales, especially if you don’t write romance.

That’s one thing that being stuck in the writing community will do: it will box you in to the point where you think nothing else is going on outside that bubble, and let me just remind you that’s not the case at all. I’ve joined Stuff Your Kindle Days, and out of respect for the person putting it together I’m not going to spew the numbers she shares with us, and I have no idea what Stuff Your Kindle event this is anyway. There are so many now it’s hard to keep track of them all. I hadn’t heard there was one going on today, but let’s just say there are 500 books available. That seems to be an average number where these things are concerned, so that means 500 authors are taking part. Some authors’ newsletters subscribers and social media followings can get pretty high, but if those 500 authors had 1,000 newsletter subscribers, that’s half a million readers this event is going out to. Not everyone opens their emails, so we can subtract a few thousand from that number but we can also add them in again to make up for authors posting on their social media. I would think a half million readers is pretty generous as authors just starting out can have as few as a hundred newsletter subscribers, and some none at all, using the event to jumpstart their writing careers.

A half million readers might seem like a lot, but according to Visual Capitalist, in 2020, there were five billion eighteen million adults in the world between the ages of 20 and 79. That’s a lot of readers that we might be forgetting about when we hear there’s a Stuff Your Kindle Day.

I think instead of being bummed there’s an event going on, or trying to blame your low sales on holidays (that not everyone celebrates) or a time of year that doesn’t affect all parts of the world at the same time, like summer (we have summer in the US while Australia has winter for a quick and harmless reminder), we could just use that energy to figure out how to reach readers all over all year round.

That’s easier said than done, of course, as my own sales being what they are don’t put me in a position to preach to anyone. But, I’m also realistic in that I don’t blame my lack of sales on things like Christmas. I take full responsibility for it.

It’s a better use of your time and energy to think of ways to reach those 5 billion plus readers such as write a reader magnet and build your newsletter list. Join a Facebook group of authors who write in your genre and introduce yourself. Networking is a great way to build relationships for newsletter swaps down the road. Experiment with some ads, they don’t have to be expensive. Double check that your categories and keywords are correct. The correct meta data will help Amazon position your book and help your ads work better too. Write another book, preferably a series. As much as I say how difficult they can be and how much energy they take, if you write a strong first book, read-through can lift your sales by more than you’d think.

When we place the blame of low sales on something like a Stuff Your Kindle Day, you’re taking power away from yourself. I know marketing can feel painful and not everything you do is going to work, but you can explore options to get the word out about your books.

Anyway, this was just a quick thought I had today. I hope you’re all staying warm where you are. It was a chilly -20F this morning when I went out to feed my animals. While I’m waiting for it to warm up I’m busy writing WICKED GAMES, but next week I’ll update you on what I’ve been doing.

See you on Monday!

QUICK LINKS:

I wrote about Stuff Your Kindle Days in a different post, and if you write romance or a romance subgenre and want to participate, you can find the list here.

If you’re interested in buying a promotion David Gaughran has a huge list, and some aren’t that much money. You can find the list here.

Written Word Media’s 2025 Trends: Part Two

Posted on February 3, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

2,028 words
11 minutes read time

If you’re just finding the blog and/or missed the first five trends I wrote about that are in Written Word Media’s blog post, you can find that post here: Written Word Media’s 2025 Publishing Trends: Part One. And if you want to read Written Word Media’s blog post yourself, you can find it here: https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/the-top-10-publishing-trends-for-2025/

Let’s jump right in to the trends.

Trend number six: Trad and Indie Converge in Due Course
We already see this happening in different ways, so I would imagine this will keep going. Publishers snapping up indies who are doing well to exploit the audiences they’ve already built, trad authors publishing titles on the side themselves, the Big Five using print on demand technology. Publishing is getting mixed up more than it ever has been, and that won’t stop as authors and publishers alike look for the best ways to find an audience, save money on printing and distribution, and keep as many royalties as they can.

I think what this means for indies is that as long as you put out a good book that has a good cover and has been edited, it’s not going to matter if you published the book yourself. The stigma that used to come from self-publishing is gone. Trad authors who publish on the side to either add extra books to their publishing schedule or publish books that their agent didn’t sell, or whatever the reason is, they have a loyal audience who buys all their books and it doesn’t matter if it was trad-pubbed or not. Indies don’t have that convenience of an already-made audience, so that’s one thing we have to take upon ourselves, but everything else is pretty much the same, especially when we read every day about a traditionally published book that needs more editing. If you want to read about traditional publishers using print-on-demand equipment, Jane Friedman wrote a blog post about it and you can read it here: https://janefriedman.com/dont-demonize-print-on-demand/

Trend number seven: AI Tools Become More Mainstream
I think anyone who really believes this isn’t tapped into the way a lot of authors feel. I get that being on Threads and seeing the hate AI evokes isn’t an accurate sampling of authors everywhere, but just knowing that there is a portion of authors out there who won’t use AI no matter what makes this prediction shaky at best.

As I discussed in my blog post about KC Crowne, I do understand that Al can be used for different things. WWM’s article also talked about non-fiction uses, such as “social media posting, to advertising, email, sales fulfillment, or tax management” and I think if authors start embracing Al in bigger numbers, that will be all they’ll use it for, because, here’s the thing. Writers actually like to write. We want to plot our stories, we want to come up with backstories, we want to delve into our characters’ feelings and emotions so we can evoke those feelings and emotions in our readers. If we turn to Al for any part of that creative process, why are we writing then? Like with KC wanting to relate to her readers, how can she do that when she won’t take the time to get to know her own characters and write her own work?

People who predict the controversy of using AI will go away don’t have their fingers on the pulse of what a lot of authors feel. We also want people to get paid for their work, which is why I would never ask Al to create a picture for me. Almost every single thing you want can be found on a stock photo site, and if you can’t find it there, hire an artist, and maybe she’ll be able to pay her internet bill with the fee you’re paying her.

Readers may not care if you use AI to write, or to make your books’ covers, or to make Facebook ads as long as their enjoyment of a book they read isn’t impacted. Which means that whether you use AI or not, your main goal when writing and packaging your book should be to deliver a good product that will keep readers coming back for more.

Trend number eight: AI Unlocks Licensing and IP Innovation
I think this trend will only work for the authors who can pay to do it correctly. A long time ago on Twitter I saw someone who said she was using AI to translate her English language books to German and then she was publishing them. She wasn’t using a German-speaking real live human to double-check Al’s work, and I think that is a big mistake. Al doesn’t understand nuance and context, and there’s a reason why the phrase “lost in translation” exists. But, paying a proofreader, any kind, costs money, and using AI is supposed to help us get around that, right? So yeah, she might have had more IP in her hands, but God only knows what she was selling her German readers. Maybe it isn’t that bad, but who’s going to know unless she starts getting bad reviews? By then, it’s too late.

AI narration is getting better and better every day, but I haven’t heard anything recently about the quality of KDP’s audiobook program. It made waves when it first came out, many authors cursing it to the depths of hell, others embracing it as an affordable way to finally have their books in audio format. When I found out that duo narration, preferred when writing dual POVs, wasn’t available, I lost interest in it anyway. I’ve always figured audiobooks will be out of my reach as I can’t afford production, and I kind of left it there. Considering a determined reader can figure out how to have a book read to them on their device, it may not matter much. If AI narration is getting better, so is text-to-voice and the experience for a reader that’s not too picky will be just fine.

I think the bottom line on AI and IP is that yeah, Al can help you put together translations and audio books and art for special editions, but it’s up to you to make sure the quality is there (no one wants to see a model who has six fingers on each hand and has three legs). Al can make mistakes, (just look at Grammarly and how often they recommend commas you don’t need) and going without a human to check and make sure what he’s doing is okay is a risk I wouldn’t want to take with my audience. Listen, I’ve edited for authors who have trusted Grammarly, and it’s harder to edit a manuscript like that than if they would have just handed me a rough draft. Grammarly and other editing software is not perfect so always use with caution.

You might end up with a lot of IP if you use AI to get ahead, but if it’s trash, it’s not worth much.

Trend number nine: Audiobook Accessibility Expands in 2025
We already talked about this a bit, but it will be up to authors who want to use AI narration and readers who want to listen to it. When it comes to AI, it isn’t just about availability and quality, it’s also about what you feel is best for you, your book business, and audience. Not everyone wants to support AI. Maybe we want to support true voice actors who depend on their jobs to make a living. Maybe readers would also like to support humans. Once you put out enough audio books, you’ll find an audience who will support either (or maybe even both). Maybe you’ll find a system where you hire narrators for full-length books but use AI for novellas, or maybe you write only shorts and AI is good enough for your needs. As access expands, it doesn’t mean authors will use it. And if authors us it, it doesn’t mean readers want to listen to it. So while this trend is true, it will expand, because why wouldn’t it, authors can choose not to create with it and readers can choose not to consume it.

Trend number ten: POD Goes Mainstream
We talked a little bit about this already, and it didn’t even occur to me that I’ve purchased a book from a trad author and her paperback book came printed by KDP (there was the time, date, and location stamp in the back). I was wondering what the heck and if she’d been dropped by her publisher and had gotten her rights back. It makes sense for publishers to use POD as it takes up less space than keeping stock and they don’t have to worry about titles going out of print. But as Drew Broussard in Jane’s blog post I linked to above says, there’s just a little lesser quality with a POD print than a book that came from a print run. You’re not going to get the embossed letters or fancy textures, you even run the risk of getting the wrong book between the covers, so I’m guessing that publishers will decide which title will get the POD treatment based on how big the audience still is and how old the book is.

This also could be why it takes so dang long to get author copies. Obviously the more authors who depend on POD the busier the equipment is, and that means planning ahead months if you need to order author copies. Especially since the more authors who use the equipment the more taxed they are and you don’t know if your books will come in good condition and you need to put in a replacement order.

Everyone says don’t write to trends, write the book you want to write because trends change too quickly to keep up. That’s not true, and Billionaire romance is proof of that. Everyone said that was a trend, that “mommy porn” was a passing phase, but it’s going on fifteen years since EL James published her Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy and Billionaire romance is still one of the top selling romance subgenres, though lately Mafia is giving it a run for its money. Trends take a long time to actually lose favor with readers, even if it feels like it happens overnight. These trends WWM talked about won’t fade because that’s just the direction publishing is going right now. AI won’t go away because too many people find value in using it, even if practices like using it to write or narrate books some find too abhorrent to do.

2025 will be like all the others, authors writing good books and trying to get them seen to build an audience of their 1000 true fans. Sometimes I think the publishing industry is glutted with too many books, but then I remember that readers can read a book a day and demand probably matches supply, even if we look at the thousands of books published every month and it doesn’t feel like it. Personally, I don’t think ramping your publishing schedule will help any. If someone doesn’t know you’ve written a book, they wont know you’ve written two. Being that the top marketing advice right now is to write the next book, advice I have passed along and believe in, I think we should still be writing with intent, trying to level up our craft each time we write, always trying to write a book better than our last.

The fact is, it’s difficult finding an audience, but the trick now is to not give up. Do what you have to do to stay interested and engaged and not lose heart. I’ve started to enjoy working on LOSS AND DAMAGES again, and I get excited talking about the next book I’m going to write. I like thinking about the future and the books I want to write, having material planned for well into 2027. I don’t know what life has in store for me, but I’m pretty sure writing is more than a passing trend.

Take care of yourselves this year, and in the meantime, I’ll you next week!

My 2025 Word of the Year

Posted on December 16, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

Pantone, a company that “provides a universal language of color for many industries” announced it’s color for 2025 . . . Mocha Mousse. Apparently, it’s the first time in 25 years that they chose a shade of brown.

taken from https://news.artnet.com/art-world/pantone-2025-color-of-the-year-mocha-mousse-2582184

It’s a thing, I suppose, to choose a theme, a color, a resolution, (I almost typed revolution, and maybe with the current political environment in the States, it’s that, too) to express what we plan to do, to describe the vibe we want to put forth into the coming year.

For years I never bothered because I knew every year was going to be the same as before. It’s really depressing and soul-sucking to have a health issue that doesn’t seem treatable, much less curable, and I treated each year as the same. This post isn’t about what I’ve suffered with (I’ve made you suffer with me on this blog, and I know we are both tired of that) but I can’t deny that now that I know what’s wrong and that there aren’t more serious matters to contend with (no colon or ovarian cancer, yay!) I can’t help but think of the next year in a different light.

A romance author I know went though breast cancer treatment this year, and she said she wouldn’t be able to approach writing her books in the same way. That made a lot of sense because when you go through trauma like that and can come out the other side, maybe not whole, but in pieces that can be glued together, you can’t help but be a different person.

You all know I’ve been at this for a long time, (no, this isn’t a woe-as-me post . . . I’ve had almost a million page reads in KU this year alone, so I definitely know that I’m luckier than a lot of authors) and if you do something long enough, maybe you don’t lose your joy, but you know. It stops being exciting, it stops being . . . I don’t want to say fun because I still do, have fun writing, that is. But no matter how much you enjoy something, if you feel you have to do it, it becomes monotonous, even if only slightly.

So my word of 2025 isn’t a word, but a phrase. “Be still and know.”

What’s funny is my sister, daughter, and I were shopping downtown Fargo, ND, and there are all these trendy little shops. We went into one and this saying was on journals and mugs and pens and paperweights. I liked it, the peace of it, and I asked my sister where it came from. She looked it up on her phone, and it’s actually a Bible verse: “Be still, and know that I am God” Psalm 46 verse 10.

I’m not religious. My parents sent me to a private Baptist school from Kindergarten through fourth grade, then they sent me to public school in fifth on, though I did attend Sunday church services until I moved to go to college. That kind of ruined organized religion for me because even though I was young, I saw how hypocritical people were. There may be exceptions, but I grew up learning religious people aren’t nice. And I do see that, as an adult, people using their religion to feel better than other people, or as an excuse to do nasty things that Jesus definitely wouldn’t have done while He was here.

For a while, that tainted the saying for me, but like any religious person, I can twist it to what I want it to mean for myself. Just kidding, kind of. I still like the peace of it, the quietness of the meaning.

The last few years I’ve done nothing but move forward, and I have accomplished a lot in that time. I still would like to do a few things in 2025, and I let you know what those were in a previous blog post. But I’m going to look at things differently, slow down, enjoy the silence, and work on my books in a way that I want and find that joy again.

I want to finally stand still and appreciate how far I’ve come and all that I’ve accomplished. I want to rest and breathe and do other things that aren’t book-related. Moving forward is great when you have goals and plans and somewhere to go, but maybe I’m done moving forward. Maybe I’ve reached my destination, and you know, that wouldn’t be a bad thing. I actually rather like the thought of it. We liken being authors and publishing to running marathons but even runners finish their races, and if they truly can’t, they get picked up wherever they happen to be on the course. I don’t need a ride, but maybe I finished, and now I can eat my banana and power bar, drink my bottle of water, take a hot shower, and do something else. A runner never stops running (okay, I did but I still go for walks), and I won’t stop writing, but maybe I don’t need to train to run any more races. Writing can go back to being fun, and now that I’m feeling better, I’m interested to see how that incorporates into the next projects I’m going to work on.

I suggest if you want to move forward, have goals to work toward. Know what your finish line is. After all, what is the saying? A goal without a plan is only a wish.

But wishes are nice too. Especially if they come in the form of chocolate cake that has mocha mousse frosting on top.

Writing Billionaire Romance Novels (in these trying times)

Posted on November 25, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

So someone on Threads said something interesting the other day. She said since the election and its outcome, she’s questioning even writing Billionaire romances anymore. She said the whole concept is not what it used to be, and I wondered about that.

There’s no mistake that billionaires don’t have a positive reputation, and maybe they never did. Elon Musk is kind of a slime (just my personal opinion–like him if you want), interfering with the election and caring more about space than helping people here on earth. Jeff Bezos is similar, I suppose, not letting the Washington Post endorse a presidential candidate and having his own odd fascination with reaching for the stars. I don’t know much about billionaires or their lifestyles, far from it, and when I write my own Billionaire romances, a lot of Googling is involved.

I can understand the idea. You don’t get to be a billionaire without stepping on a lot of toes, to put it mildly, and being willing to do that, some might consider you an asshole, cutthroat, unfeeling and uncaring. Female billionaires like Bezos’s ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, who has been giving a lot of her divorce settlement money to charity, Ruth Gottesman who gave $1 billion to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, ensuring free tuition for all future students, even Taylor Swift who donates heavily, have more positive reputations than any of their male counterparts.

That’s not to say that billionaires are… bad. I guess I could consider hoarding money bad, but I also admire the tenacity and intelligence of the people who are capable of earning that money on their own in the first place. Billionaires like Mark Zuckerburg and Bill Gates earned their money, even if it was through a lot of luck (hitting the market at the right time with their products). I wouldn’t know where to begin to build a social media/technological empire.

I think the point though, or at least, assuming without talking to her about it further, is the fact that no one needs that much money, no matter how much they give away. We all say tax the rich, and we should, but we also forget that where that money is supposed to go doesn’t always get there. You’ll find crooked, greedy politicians at every level of the government (and one will be our president), and just because the billionaires are taxed doesn’t mean us poor people will see a dime.

So what does this mean for Billionaire romance novels? I think it’s fair to say that readers will still read to escape… not everyone wants to read a novel that echoes real life. Sometimes someone wants to be trapped on Mars or get seduced by a handsome stranger in a rundown bar. There’s a certain fairytale feeling about Billionaire romance, a dreamlike quality readers like to get swept up in, especially, if, like myself, they’re so far removed from that kind of life there’s no possibility of even meeting a billionaire, much less one falling in love with them.

I understand the conundrum. The pull of having that much money but the repulsion of it too, how it makes people behave. As a Billionaire romance author, you can tackle that idea that a billionaire character doesn’t have to be bad. That being rich hasn’t turned him into an entitled asshole. Your conflict can come from other things, like Sam, in my novel Rescue Me. He’s a billionaire (on and off, he admits because he does give to charity), but he’s kind and worn out. His wife passed away from breast cancer, and he’s mourning her. His and Lily’s story doesn’t have much to do with money. She doesn’t fall in love with him because he’s rich, and he doesn’t not fall in love with her because she’s not. They’re just two people who are trying to live with their pain in the only way they know how.

There’s a danger in making your billionaire characters too soft, as another person on Threads noticed. She said she also writes kind billionaires, but she thinks thats why her books have never taken off. They aren’t alphaholes. I commiserated. My male characters won’t be mean to their love interests. I write instalove and I find it incredibly difficult to force my MMCs to mistreat the women they love. Sometimes they do because they simply don’t want to fall in love and they’re lashing out, but the kind of violence needed to write dark romance or some mafia, I’ll never be able to write.

That’s part of my point though. Just because you’re writing Billionaire, or any character that has more than a little money, you don’t have to make them mean and entitled. You don’t have to make them behave like children, stomping their feet and yelling at everyone. They can act grownup and go after what they want without hurting people. Does that sell books? (So far my answer is no. At least, I doubt I’ll ever find Haunting Adeline fame.) My characters hurt each other, don’t get me wrong, but they aren’t mean to each other just to be mean.

Readers want conflict and they want stakes, and they want men who will fall on their knees in front of their women begging them not to leave when they fuck up. That doesn’t have anything do with money, and maybe that’s where I’m going wrong.

A while back I posted a blurb in a Facebook group looking for help, and one person said just because my characters have money doesn’t make the book fall into the Billionaire category. She said this to me years ago, but it’s stuck with me, mainly because what she said is true. In a “real” Billionaire novel, characters’ problems come from having money. Like the two most famous Billionaires, Christian Grey (EL James) and Gideon Cross (Sylvia Day), you can blame most of their issues on the fact that they have money. People are always going after them out of jealousy. They have heavy backstories too, like Christian’s mother’s death and Gideon’s history with rape, and mixing their money and enemies with their backstories makes for some pretty anguishing novels. I use my characters’ money to help them get out of situations but their situations don’t always come from having money. The series I’m releasing now is probably the closest I’ve come to that. Zane’s and Zarah’s problems come from their father’s legacy–a multi-billion dollar company and more enemies than they can count. They don’t have backstories, all their problems are in their present, a first for me, because half the fun of writing is giving my characters a painful character arch they have to overcome to find happiness.

I doubt I’d sell more books not labeling them Billionaire. Just because their problems aren’t caused by money doesn’t mean that their money doesn’t influence how they live. I already put them in the contemporary romance categories anyway, so not much would change.

I’m not going to stop writing Billionaire romance, even though sales have slowed and I’m struggling like other authors. I’m ahead of where I was three years ago and I’m sure my pivot to first person present Billionaire is to thank. Not to mention, I just enjoy writing it, so why stop? Although, ironically enough, a lot of my royalties have come from my Rockstar trilogy I published in August last year. Maybe that’s a fluke or maybe Rockstars are where it’s at. Really hard to say, but unfortunately, I can only write what falls into my lap and I don’t have another rockstar plot in me at the moment. I do have three completed Billionaire novels waiting for my attention, one standalone plotted out (that I really should write before I forget it all), and two that I need to write that will complete an already-started series. That will keep me busy for quite a long time, unless all of a sudden I decide to pivot again, though with so much planned out, I’m not sure why I would.

I think the bottom line for me is that I’m going to keep writing Billionaire because I like to. Because whether my books are selling or not, my characters are kind and use their money for good. I don’t think as Billionaire authors we’re required to do anything different. Asshole billionaires sell books, and I wouldn’t begrudge any author if they didn’t want to change their ways. Nor should they have to just because of what’s going on in the world today. The fact is, there will always be billionaires, and there will always be billionaires who are fucking assholes, just like they will always be fucking assholes who are poor.

I’ll leave you with Zane’s thoughts in the third book of my King’s Crossing series, Cruel Dreams:

Pretending as if nothing is out of the ordinary, we mingle with the other guests. I see what Stella saw when she first started hanging out with Zarah and me. Jewels, gowns, expensive bags. So much waste trying to outdo each other and pretending to be better than everyone else. Talking tee times and country clubs, mergers and acquisitions. The meaningless words flow over me like a cold shower.

It’s a wonder Stella loves me at all.

Have a good week, everyone! Until next time!

Past Decisions and Their Consequences

Posted on November 18, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

Too tired to look for a stock image. Imagine something pretty here.

Everything we do results in some kind of consequence, some kind of reward, whether we know it or not. Whether we want to admit it or not.

Last week was another crazy day on social media when I saw someone encouraging people to use KDP’s POD, but mark up their paperback prices on Amazon to $200.00 so they could sell off their website instead. This is such a bad take for so many reasons, and when I replied saying that at least IngramSpark was a better option because you can print without distributing, she went off on me saying IS wasn’t viable for everyone and that I was toxic and privileged for even suggesting it. That really hurt and I dropped out of our conversation because I’m not going to let people assume how I live. It’s not toxic to suggest a better way of doing things, it’s not privilege to suggest a platform many authors have access to. She wanted to be right, and there were plenty of people who agreed with her. That’s fine. Look like an idiot selling your paperback for $200.00. Doesn’t bother me at all.

The main issue is that IngramSpark costs money. If you live in the US, you know how expensive ISBNs are. Part of her privilege insult was because she assumed I buy my ISBNs and that I was telling people they should do the same by suggesting they use IS. She doesn’t know that yeah, I did buy a pack of 100 (costs $575 which was almost as much as my rent) but I charged them on a credit card and it took me several years to pay them off. My ex-fiancé said he would buy them for me, but you know how that turned out and I ended up paying off a massive credit card bill that he said he would take care of. Anyway, the outcome of that story is that yeah, I did buy own ISBNs, and it’s none of her business it took me years to pay them off.

Very rarely on this blog do I suggest you spend money on your book business, but on the flip side, I’m very clear that I believe you can’t start a business properly without spending some cash. If you want to sell YOUR book off YOUR website because you’re running a business YOU own, why would you want to use an ISBN that didn’t belong to you? That’s MY main reason for buying ISBNs. They belong to me, I’m registered as the publisher, and if Amazon is ever a dick and closes my account, my books are safe. For all the hating on Amazon over on the sewing platform, they’re quick enough to take what Amazon gives them.

Anyway, so when you use free ISBNs you’re taking a risk Amazon will treat you well and if you take free ISBNs from anywhere else, you’re accepting any eventual consequences.

This isn’t a post just about ISBNs. You take risks making your own covers, especially if you don’t have the skill to create a cover that will tell readers what your genre is and won’t look homemade. Just the other day someone was bemoaning the fact he couldn’t get preorders for his book. I told him to look at his cover and maybe redo it, that it looked homemade. He actually was very nice about it, and maybe he will change it, I have no idea. That kind of consequence you may never see–you could not sell any books and blame it on lack of marketing or algorithms. Unless someone you believe and trust says your cover is garbage and you change it, you could go years without knowing what kind of damage your cover caused. I mean, you know I do my own covers, and back in the day they weren’t great. I still see the free stock photo I used on 1700 Hamilton other places, and I published that book eight years ago now. Canva templates taught me a lot, and I still like how this cover came out, the first for Wherever He Goes, even though I changed it to something sexier later that’s still the cover on the book now.

Not listening to your editor and having a book bomb after the fact can have dire consequences–a reader won’t give you another chance if they spent money on a book that had plot holes and grammatical errors every two sentences. And, you know, poor reviews last forever. I’ve been editing my own books for a while, and I know the risks, may have even suffered from some of them. God only knows who’s read my books and said they’d never read me again. I also know the risks of trusting people, and well, tired of that, so you have to choose the lesser of the two evils.

My biggest regret so far was not starting a newsletter sooner, and I wonder how far I’d be now if I had given as much attention to a newsletter as I have to this blog. Maybe because of the change in direction I decided on in 2020, it wouldn’t have mattered, or those people who signed up wouldn’t have cared either way.

After unpublishing some hardbacks and Large Print, I thought about unpublishing a couple of my first books, just because they aren’t the quality of the others, nor are they in the genre I decided to write in. Some say romance is romance, but my romantic speculative fiction could probably go, also my erotica that I decided I couldn’t write because there was just too much sex. (If you have to remind yourself to put in the sex scenes, erotica probably isn’t for you.) When you say you want to write and publish whatever, those consequences can catch up with you. Difficult to make a brand out of “whatever” and you may look back in five years at all the word salad you hoped people would buy.

The one thing all these have in common is that no one can tell you these things. I mean, yeah, the advice is out there, cover to market, hire an editor, start a newsletter, buy your ISBNs if you can. All that’s out there but it’s funny because we’ve turned being indie into defying the rules and maybe some rules are meant to be broken, but this is a business and whether we like it or not, there are best practices.

I almost didn’t write this blog post because I realize the subject is boring and repetitive, even if I’ve made similar mistakes. The bad advice out there can really take me aback, and that woman who had supporters telling people to price up their book left me speechless. What would readers think stumbling upon a book that cost $200.00? How is that author going to tell those readers she preferred to sell off her website? It all seemed so bizarre to me, yet people agreed, said they were going to try it. I don’t know, it just seems like one of those things that you could look back on later and say, “What was I thinking?” Of course, you can do that for just about anything, the cover that wasn’t right, blowing off your editor, not listening to someone who knew what they were talking about because you were determined to fail on your own. That’s how people learn, and I’ve had people tell me to hire an editor, but some things are easier said than done.

So this post is 1200 words of drivel (it’s almost Thanksgiving in the US so I’ll refer to it as turkey gravy), but honestly, my brain is fried. I’m halfway through editing my age-gap. I’m really loving the story and it’s fun to see how far my writing as come, but editing is tiring, probably more so than simply writing. I also have to proof my series proofs, and that will take a minute, but I’m hoping that I’ll get everything wrapped up by the end of the year. I want to start working on my first person stuff again, putting into practice the things I finally know that I didn’t before. I’ve come a long way working on my King’s Crossing series. Really, smoothing out over a half a million words taught me a lot, and I know it did because working on my Rocky Point series was really eye-opening. I agree that sometimes you have to fail on your own to learn, but you do have to keep working on your craft and level up on your own if you don’t want to take anyone’s advice.

That’s all I have for this week. I’ll probably post my Billionaire post next week. I think it’s still relevant, and tempers, while they haven’t cooled all the way down, aren’t so hot, at least, and even if it makes some readers crabby, I think it was wise to wait.

After that, well, it’s year-end stuff, and before you know it, it will be January. The world keeps spinning, no matter what kind of rut you’re in. Do your best to keep moving forward, and hopefully you’ll see more rewards than consequences.

A Massive Monday Author Update

Posted on November 11, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

I was going to blog about something different today, and I even had the post written and scheduled. It had to do with writing billionaire romance in the current political climate, but I don’t have the heart to post it. We had a chance to do something great, to make positive change, and we blew it. We chose hate and violence, and we will pay for that for the next four years, and possibly beyond. All I can hope is that the Democrats who did win state by state will slow him down and block him as much as possible. Maybe he’ll be too busy golfing to cause all the damage he says he’s going to cause.

I know lots of people didn’t get much done last week, and it’s understandable. I’ve always used my writing to hide from reality (or, more accurately, my health issues), and this week was no exception. I was able to finish editing my Rocky Point Wedding series, finish the covers, and order the proofs. I’m going to read them over to look for mistakes and make sure the changes I made make sense. I had a lot of timeline discrepancies because the first three books overlap and I didn’t keep track of my characters and what they were doing. Then I fluffed up some scenes, took out some things to streamline the prose, and I’ll just read them over quick before I approve them. I’m also interested in how the covers are going to print. When I chose the background stock photo, I knew I’d have trouble with the spine and back cover, so we’ll see if my “fix” looks good or if I need to try something else. On screen I think it looks okay and I tried really hard to match up the grey blocks and black gradients with the spine lines but printing isn’t always accurate, so we’ll see what happens.

I ended up using the same ISBNs for the books, which I probably shouldn’t have done since these will have new covers and substantial changes to the insides. On the other hand, unpublishing the old ones so I can publish new ones seemed to be a waste of ISBNs, especially since before I revamped them I wasn’t selling (m)any anyway. I put in the copyright pages that these were re-edited and re-released but I don’t know if it was necessary or will do any good. I have quite a few of the first book floating around out there due to free promos I’ve done in the past, but I don’t think it will make a difference to ask KDP to push out the new version to the readers who have the old version on their Kindles. I’ve heard of authors doing that, but I have never tried. If they don’t give me a hard time and just let me update, I think I’ll be happy with that and leave the rest alone. I don’t like messing with KDP, and I’m relieved that so far the preorders for my King’s Crossing series are still okay, that Amazon hasn’t arbitrarily canceled them. So, whether using the same ISBNs was the right call or not, I don’t know, but no one is really policing these changes, so I guess there’s no harm in it.

I’m going to do some more cleaning up of my third person books. While I’m waiting for my proofs to come back, I started re-editing The Years Between Us, an age-gap standalone. I’m halfway through the first chapter and haven’t found anything too bad, I just like to echo words and hadn’t caught on to it yet. No matter what Stephen King says, the thesaurus is your friend. I updated the back matter too, deleting people out of my Acknowledgements page that no longer had a place there, updated my Also By page, and a few other odds and ends. I’ve started directing all my readers to my vmrheault.com website and eventually I’ll take books off this one. It makes sense to turn my author website into my real author site and just use this site to blog. I’m having fun reading this book though, since I haven’t for many years. It has the same kind of tone Rescue Me does, and it’s funny that all my books have the same style, even between 3rd person past and 1st person present. I guess that’s why they say a reader falls in love with your voice. I won’t be changing the cover for this book–I think it looks fine how it is, and being that it’s age-gap, I doubt I’d be able to find a couple that fits as well as the one I found a few years ago. I know a couple years back I wrote a blog post on the differences, but I can’t find it now. For curiosity, this was the old one when I first published, then changed to the second when I couldn’t sell books. Very different vibe from the blurb.

I unpublished the two Large Print books I was able to publish before Amazon started blocking them due to duplicate content. I want to offer the same versions of all my books, so I unpublished the Hardcover versions of Captivated by Her, Addicted to Her, and Rescue Me. Hardcovers don’t sell and I wasn’t going to bother publishing more. Because they’re a mess and didn’t sell anyway, I also unpublished my two ebook boxset compilations–my Tower City series and my Rocky Point Wedding series. That sounds like a lot of unpublishing, but I mainly wanted to clean up my editions. The ISBNs will always be attached to those versions and they might even stay on my Amazon product pages, but from here on, I’m only going to offer the Kindle version and a plain paperback.

I was also going to unpublish the first three books I published (1700 Hamilton and my Summer Secrets series) but that would require updating back matter of books I’m not going to re-edit and I don’t want to do that. I was even going to unpublish my first trilogy, but then I remembered I wrote a bonus novella that sounds better than the original trilogy and closed out the story nicely, so even if they’re not well-written, I’d be taking down at least a quarter of a million words. I guess there’s no harm in keeping them up, but they aren’t my best work and I’ll never promote them in any way.

I probably should have done this stuff a long time ago, but I wasn’t feeling well and during the pandemic when everything was just kind of shitty, I wasn’t really thinking about it. I was more focused on building my pen name and writing books for that. Now that my King’s Crossing series is slowly releasing, I have a bit of free time, though not much if I don’t want my conveyor belt of content to slow down. I like knowing I have books scheduled–it takes the pressure off to write quickly.

That’s what I’m doing until the end of the year, and I have to remember what I do on KDP I have to do on IngramSpark. I updated the interior of All of Nothing after I re-edited it a few weeks ago, and I’ll have no choice but to replace both the interior and cover files for my Rocky Point series. Even though it’s going to cost a good $200.00, there’s just too much discrepancy for them to share the same ISBNs but look so different on other retailers. I used to get free revisions with my Alliance of Independent Authors membership, but now I noticed that instead of five or six free revisions you only get one. When I re-edited and re-covered my Lost and Found trilogy, I had enough revision codes I only had to pay $25.00. Unfortunately, that seems not to be the case anymore, but I’m tenacious and I’ll see what I can find when it’s time to do it.

I’d like to start 2025 with a clean slate, putting my 3rd person stuff behind me and looking forward to the future and building my 1st person pen name. I just felt like my 3rd person stuff was unfinished somehow. This won’t make that feeling entirely go away, but I can push them aside knowing that they’re better than they were before. I know for sure that my Rocky Point series sounds 100% better and I don’t consider the time I spent on them a waste, even if it will be an expensive hassle to swap out their files on Ingram. (It was actually fun to see how far my writing has come.) I might even stop putting books on there. There’s no real benefit, but it’s easy because I do my own formatting and covers. All it costs is a bit of time.

That’s about all I have this week. I’m busy doing what I want to do. I’m not going to worry about sales or page reads anymore. Those numbers have been dismal since summer and I honestly don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m doing all I can, and I need to find the fun in writing again. I’m proud of my books and what I’m doing for the indie community with this blog, beta reading, formatting, and editing for others. Sometimes I forget about what matters most, but it gets easier as I feel better. I have more gratitude for the small things and maybe getting my 3rd person stuff situated feels like a bigger project than I really wanted to tackle right now, but it will be a relief when it’s all done.

I said this was a massive update only because it felt massive. I never thought I would unpublish anything, and pushing unpublish made my stomach quiver. It’s nice because KDP keeps your title there and if I ever wanted to publish those things again, I can, but I think I’ll stick with my decision to keep my books in KU, offer the Kindle version, and price my paperbacks as cheaply as I can. There are discrepancies with some of my prices too, like my series versus standalones. I just price whatever I feel like pricing which doesn’t look very professional, but that’s something I”ll have to look into another time.

For the rest of this week I’ll be re-editing The Years Between Us and diving into proofing my wedding series proofs. I’m on track to get those done by December so I can promote them for Christmas. I think that may be my last hurrah I’m going to give my 3rd person stuff.

2025 is meant for new things. I’m going to leave behind the people who have hurt me, focus on marketing my King’s Crossing series, and plan my next releases. Now that I have a diagnosis, I’m feeling better than I have in a long time and I can leave those four years behind me.

I hope 2025 can be the start of something new for you too, despite the election outcome. We’ve dealt with him before, and we’ll do it again.

Take care of yourselves, and I’ll catch up with you you next week!

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Vania Margene Rheault

Independent Contemporary Romance Author & Blogger

Tag Archives: self-publishing

Monday Musings: ARCs, Goodreads, and Writing While You’re Sick

Three Things I’ve Stopped Doing (and Three Things I Always Will)

Monday Author Update: When you can’t decide what to write next

When the Words Stop. What then?

Thursday Thoughts: The world is a large place

Written Word Media’s 2025 Trends: Part Two

My 2025 Word of the Year

Writing Billionaire Romance Novels (in these trying times)

Past Decisions and Their Consequences

A Massive Monday Author Update

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