NYC and #RWA19 Events This Week!

/ Author News, Events, Travel

This week I’ll be in New York City for the RWA conference. I have three events scheduled and two of them are completely free and open to the public, so please come see me if you’re in the area!

Best-Selling Authors in Bryant Park: A Lotta Romance

Wednesday, July 24, 12:30–1:45 PM

Bryant Park
Free and open to the public! I think I can sign whatever you bring, but don’t hold me to it. If not, I’ll make time after the official signing.

RWA 2019 Avon Signing (Conference Badge Required)

Thursday, July 25, 2019, 3–4 PM

Westside Ballroom, New York Marriott Marquis
I have no idea what I’m signing. Could be PR, could be AB. Find out with me! :)

RWA 2019 Readers for Life Signing

Saturday, July 27, 2019, 3–5 PM

Westside Ballroom, New York Marriott Marquis
Free and open to the public! I’m signing PR. No outside books, but you’re welcome to come say hello and get a button/bookmark!

If you see me at the conference, please say hello! I’m a super introvert, so I’ll probably be hiding in a corner, but I love to chat if I don’t have to be the one to start the conversation. :)

I’ll be around all week and I’m happy to meet up to sign your books outside of the signing times. Twitter is the best place to keep track of me and to reach me. And please introduce yourself, even if we’ve met before. Names and faces are difficult for me, and with conference brain being crazy, I’ll be doing well to remember my own name.

Last year, I sat next to the lovely Tara Wyatt for the entire Avon signing, talked to her a bunch, and then reintroduced myself to her the next day like I’d never seen her before in my life. She was so nice about it, but it’s still one of those cringey things my brain likes to remind me of when I’m trying to fall asleep. So I promise you, if I’ve forgotten you (and I inevitably will), it’s not you, it’s 1000% me.

If you are planning to come to RWA or one of the signings, I made some Badass Space Princess buttons. Find me to snag one for yourself!

And if you’re not going to be in NYC this week, I hope you have an excellent week wherever you are! :)

Happy Book Birthday to The Queen’s Advantage!

/ 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.

The Queen's Advantage Cover

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!

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

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

/ 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!

A Relaxing Weekend

/ Life

I’m still desperately behind, but I decided that I needed to take a weekend off because I honestly can’t remember the last time I did nothing for a whole weekend. It’s been months, at least. I might have worked for a bit on Saturday morning, but I mostly relaxed this weekend.

On Saturday afternoon, Dustin and I dove back into Fallout76. We hadn’t played since December and they’ve made a fair number of changes since then. I was somewhat worried the influx of new players thanks to the Battle Royale mode they added would cause more griefing, but everyone we saw in-game was cool. And it was fun to see a lot of low-level players on the server.

The game is still a little on the buggy side, but it was a lot of fun to wander the wasteland. We prefer co-op games where we can be a team and play together. And Fallout76 is the right amount of “massively-multiplayer” for me. There are some events where a big group gets together to defeat a boss, but for the most part, Dustin and I chill out together with no one else around.

And you can build a camp.

…

A Relaxing WeekendRead More »

The Queen’s Gambit Audiobook!

/ Author News, Books, Writing

I’ve been sitting on this news for a while (though my newsletter subscribers got an early hint), but I’ve sold the audiobook rights for The Queen’s Gambit and The Queen’s Advantage to Tantor Media!

The Queen's Gambit Audiobook cover featuring a woman with a gun with planets behind her.

Not only that, but The Queen’s Gambit audiobook is already available! If audiobooks are your jam, now you have the option and you don’t even have to wait. :)

As you may know, I find it deeply strange to listen to my own audiobooks, but the few seconds I heard sounded good. 😂

Rachel Dulude narrates and she’s narrated many, many fabulous books.

I don’t know when the audiobook of The Queen’s Advantage will be available, but it will very likely be after the ebook release, because I just sent final edits in to my agent late last night. 🎉🎉🎉

TQA now clocks in at just over 52k, so it’s firmly out of novella territory. The serial was about 42k, which means I added around 10k during edits. This wasn’t a massively different rewrite like the end of the TQG, but there were definitely some changes and lots of deepening of the various scenes.

I hope you all enjoy the new words!

Do you want to ensure you don’t miss the new, improved TQA? You can preorder from your favorite retailer now! 😉

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