Wednesday, 21 July 2021

New release? After 13 years, 2 publishers and 1 agent...

The Novel

My debut romance novel, Café au Lait, has been around for a while! In 2006, I found a literary agent; in 2007 she sold the book to Dorchester Publishing who, when it was going out of business in 2012, sold the contract to Montlake Romance. The novel became a bestseller in the UK Kindle store, twice making the top 100 in overall rankings as well as going to #1 in sub-categories several times.

Fast forward to 2021. I requested a reversion of rights from Montlake (second time asking) and received it last June. The rights! Are mine! OMG, that feels so good. Which brings me to the real news...

  

After an editorial overhaul and some sweating over finding a cover I can get behind, Café au Lait is back in stores! 🌟 It's available in paperback on Amazon, e-book at all the main e-tailers, and as a trilogy of novellas: A Heated Encounter, A Flaming Attraction, and A Greater Love. The novellas are also available wherever e-books are sold.

Welcome back, my firstborn. May the adventures never stop.




Wednesday, 5 May 2021

Refocus. Hard!

You can wake me every day, darlin'

The last few months have been particularly trying, exasperating, exhausting, debilitating, sickening, and a host of 'ings' of that ilk. There's the family drama, and as a good friend of mine puts it, "Ain't no shit like family shit." There's the spiking Covid infection and death rates on my tiny island after such a great start where we kept the crisis in check--then masses of stranded Trinis were brought home, community spread took off, pandemic fatigue set in, the insane conspiracy theories became the other pandemic, and indiscipline flourished. 

I have not been idle during the past seven or so months: I've been hard at work editing, formatting and shepherding other authors' books to publication. I'm really grateful for this; those deadlines force focus and concentration like nothing else can, and the money I earn from this and from royalties takes care of expenses that my regular incomes do not.

Quite a ride, it has been, with no end in sight. So my intention, now that Brazil's P1 variant has landed here, looked around and smiled, anticipating the chaos and devastation that's within its power to inflict? 

Refocus. Refocus on the writing. Hard. 

I have so many projects in so many stages of non-completion. The GWIN (Great West Indian Novel) has been at one-third for--and I checked a few days ago--at least 10 years. By contrast, I have two complete stories in my historical series that have been ready for publication for over a year; all I have to do is get covers for them. Most of my modest royalties come from the historical series so I really need to get cracking on this. Then there are two novels and a half-written novella in the Liane Spicer romance bunch. The completed memoir that's also been snoozing for more years than I want to recall. There are literary short stories to be submitted to journals and competitions; seven or eight of those are just sitting on my hard drive and in the cloud.

It would be wonderful to have a gorgeous man in a very brief toga wake me on mornings with a sunny smile and abs, then proceed to make me meet all my goals. But in the absence of such, it's all up to me to refocus. Hard.