Books – Page 18 – Jessie Mihalik

Aurora Blazing ARC Giveaway!

August 19, 2019 / Aurora Blazing, Giveaway, Writing

Aurora Blazing comes out on October 1, which means we’re just about a month and a half away from release! Ahhh!!! Where did this year go?

If you want to read it even sooner, I’m giving you a chance to get your hands on an early copy! I have three ARCs (advance reader copies) to give away. See below for details. And if you haven’t preordered yet, now is an excellent time. :)

And don’t forget, for US readers, my publisher is running a Goodreads giveaway, too!

To save her brother and protect her family’s future, a powerful princess must join forces with a dashing man from her past in this thrilling space adventure, the second novel in the Consortium Rebellion trilogy.

As the dutiful daughter of High House von Hasenberg, Bianca set aside her personal feelings and agreed to a political match arranged by her family, only to end up trapped in a loveless, miserable marriage. When her husband unexpectedly dies, Bianca vows never to wed again. Newly independent, she secretly uses her wealth and influence to save other women stuck in dire circumstances. Information is power and Bianca has a network of allies and spies that would be the envy of the ’verse—if anyone knew about it.

When her family’s House is mysteriously attacked, Bianca’s oldest brother, the heir to House von Hasenberg, disappears. Fearful for her brother’s life, the headstrong Bianca defies her father and leaves Earth to save him. Ian Bishop, the director of House von Hasenberg security—and Bianca’s first love—is ordered to find and retrieve the rebellious woman.

Ian is the last man Bianca wants to see. To evade capture, she leads him on a merry chase across the universe. But when their paths finally collide, she knows she must persuade him to help her. Bianca will do anything to save her sibling, even if it means spending time alone on a small ship with the handsome, infuriating man who once broke her heart.

As the search takes them deep into rival House Rockhurst territory, Bianca must decide if she can trust Ian with the one piece of information that could destroy her completely . . .

Preorder now:

EDIT: Entries are now closed, winners will be announced soon. Check for the new blog post in a day or two. :)

~~To enter to win an ARC, here are the rules. Please read them all! Incomplete entries will be ignored.~~

The entry period starts now and ends on August 30, 2019 at 12:00PM (noon) CST. You must be eighteen or older. Open to US and international readers.
Leave ONE top-level comment (i.e., not a reply) below and tell me about something fun you’ve done this summer. It could be reading a new book, a vacation, enjoying a break from school, etc. Let’s celebrate summer fun! (EDIT: Okay, I forgot about the southern hemisphere. D’oh! If you live south, tell me something fun you’ve done this winter.) Duplicate top-level comments will be deleted. You are welcome to reply to other comments, though, because those won’t count as entries.
Comments must be on the blog post on my site (www.jessiemihalik.com). Comments on Facebook, Goodreads, etc. won’t count.
Come back after August 30 and see if you’ve won! Winners will be picked by random number and must claim their book. Instructions will be included in the winning post.

I will start! Not only did I finish writing Chaos Reigning (and you might want to peek over there for a teeny snippet!), I also have time to read again! In the past couple weeks, I’ve read Brazen and the Beast by Sarah MacLean and The Wallflower Wager by Tessa Dare, and both were fantastic!

How to Write a Book in 165 Days… More or Less

August 14, 2019 / Chaos Reigning, Writing

This week, I officially sent off book three (*cough* Chaos Reigning *cough*) to my editor, so I thought you might like a peek behind the curtain of how a rough draft comes about. Thanks to Scrivener, I have a detailed history of my word count for each day.

It is not very pretty, but I hope it helps some of you who write as slow as I do. You don’t have to write like the wind. You can write like molasses in winter and still write a book, you just have to hang in there and keep going.

Finishing the draft (not including a week of edits) took 165 days, but I only wrote on 124 of them. I started on February 18 and finished on August 1. For a good chunk of the book I was writing every day, including weekends. I prefer to take weekends off, but a deadline waits for no woman.

Let’s start with the overview before diving into the details. The monthly breakdown looks like this:

Month	Word Count
February	2,607
March	10,105
April	26,490
May	15,510
June	16,123
July	27,030
August	5,297

You can see that I really struggled in May. I had edits for TQA and proofs for AB, plus I always struggle in the middle. You can also see why, at the beginning of June, I decided to see if I could push my deadline back from July 1. I hated to do it, but if I hadn’t, June might’ve killed me.

Luckily, there was some room in the schedule, so a later deadline gave me a bit of breathing room. I actually took some weekends in June off, but I was still stuck in the middle, so between the two, my word count was not good.

In July, I realized I had to get serious or I wasn’t going to make it, especially because the RWA conference would take up an entire week. Sadly, my brain did not get on board with this plan and I went into RWA in a mild panic. Where I met with my editor.

In person.

…

How to Write a Book in 165 Days… More or LessRead More »

Book Update and Goodreads Giveaways

August 6, 2019 / Aurora Blazing, Polaris Rising, Writing

I finished the rough draft of book three! 🎉 I expected to be writing right up to the deadline, but some super productive alien took over my brain last week and I ended up writing over 17k words in four days, which still kind of amazes me. I’m not sure what happened, but I wouldn’t mind if it happened every week. :)

The first draft clocked in around 103k and since then has grown to almost 105k as I go back and edit. It’s out with my alpha readers right now and I’m letting it rest a bit, then I’ll do another editing pass before I send it off to my editor next week.

Finishing a book is always a little bittersweet, especially this book which gave me such trouble during drafting (the last four days notwithstanding). During edits, I read it end-to-end, which you don’t really do when writing, and it’s not as bad as I expected.

It might even be good.

I don’t know, I’m too close to it, but that’s why I have early readers. None of them have stopped answering my calls yet, so maybe it’s okay. Or maybe they just haven’t gotten to the bad parts yet. 😅

In other news, my publisher is running two giveaways on Goodreads right now. Both of them are US only (sorry, international folks!). The first is for a chance to win one of 100 copies of Polaris Rising. It ends August 10, so get cracking.

The second, which might be more interesting to you all, is a chance to win one of 50 early copies of Aurora Blazing. It ends August 30.

Good luck!

Happy Book Birthday to The Queen’s Advantage!

July 9, 2019 / Author News, Books, Writing

The Queen’s Advantage is out today! This week, I get to celebrate a book birthday and my own birthday. I think they both deserve cake, right? Right. 😉

Thank you so much to everyone who preordered TQA! 🥰 If preordering is not your jam, now you can buy it from your online retailer of choice, or put in a request with your library. It’s available in both both ebook and print format.

EDIT: There is also an audiobook version coming, but it’s entirely dependent on Tantor’s recording schedule. I just heard back and the audiobook is currently scheduled for a mid-October release.

Get it now!
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play

If you want a paper copy from somewhere other than Amazon, it’s coming, but I’m not sure when. It’s set as available for expanded distribution (i.e., not just Amazon), but it takes a while to work through all of the systems. The ISBN is 1075962099.

When Queen Samara Rani fulfills the promise she made to Emperor Valentin Kos to visit his court and meet with his advisors, she knows they won’t welcome her with open arms, especially when she’s been tasked with discovering the traitors within their ranks—traitors she tricked out of five million credits.

As soon as Samara begins her investigation it becomes clear that Valentin’s advisors want her gone and they aren’t picky about how. After their tactics turn violent, Samara and Valentin race to unravel the web of treachery and lies before the next attack ends in tragedy.

When the conflict escalates in ferocity and rumors start blaming Samara, she is forced to continue her hunt alone. Uncovering traitors is difficult when courtiers learn to lie before they learn to walk, and one misstep could cost her life. However, Rogue Queens aren’t easy to kill and Samara has more than a few tricks of her own.

Get it now!

I don’t think TQA changed quite as drastically as TQG during edits, but the edits were far, far harder. I’m not sure why, but I think it was a combination of stress and anxiety about book three’s deadline. This is the first book where I really wanted to borrow Ilona Andrews’s “rocks fall, everyone dies” during edits.

Thank you so much to my betas, Regina Brandt, Chi-An Chien, and Kelly Loudamy, who read after the first round of revisions (when I felt like murdering all of the characters and calling it a day) and offered feedback. The story is stronger thanks to their efforts.

I hope you enjoy the changes, or if you’re reading for the first time, I hope you enjoy an improved story over the serial. :) You can check out the revised first two chapters on the book page. Happy reading!

Deadlines and Promo, a Ramble

July 1, 2019 / Life, Polaris Rising, Writing

First of all, Polaris Rising is on sale for $1.99 at the various US ebook retailers for the next two weeks (I don’t know about international—sorry!). If you’ve been meaning to pick up a copy, now is your chance to get it on sale! :)

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play

As for deadlines, some of you may remember that book three was due on July 1, and today is July 1. So book three should be finished.

Except it’s not.

At the beginning of June, it looked like I wasn’t going to make it, for a host of reasons that are all excuses and don’t alleviate the fact that I was very likely going to miss my deadline. I hate missing deadlines. Hate. But sometimes, life gives you what it gives you.

So my agent reached out to my editor and asked for an extension. Thanks to a bit of wiggle room in the schedule (and thanks to my editor being a saint), the date is now early August and I didn’t have to try to kill myself to hit July 1. I actually played a game, and took a weekend off, and slept.

I still have a lot of work to do, so it’s going to remain pretty quiet around here for another month or so. As always, I’m most active on Twitter.

Oh, and don’t forget, The Queen’s Advantage releases next week! You still have time to get your preorder in. :)

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play

While I’m here, I might as well tell you about the good news/bad news for the print copy of TQA. The bad news is that thanks to the extra length (the final draft is ~52k, compared to ~39k for TQG), the price jumped to $10.99, which is not ideal, I know. Before I get angry emails: the ebook remains $2.99 despite the extra length.

Why is the print cost so high?

I asked my agent the same thing. There are a couple things at work here. Print on demand books are more expensive, full stop. And to put the book into Amazon’s expanded distribution (which lets libraries and other bookstore customers order it), there is a middle-man that must be paid.

At $10.99, I make about $1 when someone buys an expanded distribution copy, but about $3 when someone buys from Amazon directly, and those prices can’t be set separately (I asked). That’s compared to about $2 for the ebook. So if we set the print price any lower, then I make pennies when someone outside of Amazon buys it. :(

Now for the small piece of good news: print books don’t have a preorder option. They are either up or not, and since my agent is out of the office this week, she wanted to get it up before she left.

So if you want a print book, you can order one right now and Amazon will rush it to your door. If you prefer to buy from BN or another bookstore, it will be up whenever it trickles through the system, hopefully by release. (ISBN: 1075962099) Fingers crossed!

Now back to making words. I hope you all are doing well!