My big news for April is a new publishing endeavor: As of today (and no, this is not an April Fool’s joke), I’m beginning to publish a serial story on Kindle Vella. The Sea-Mist Cottage Inn is a women’s fiction/romance story about a single mom returning home to rebuild her life, twenty years after she ran away.
Episode one is available now. You can find it here–and that’s where you can also follow the story so you’re instantly informed of all new episodes. I plan to publish episodes twice a week!
If you don’t know about Kindle Vella, you can also find information about the platform at that link.
As for writing updates, I’m about 50%-60% through the first draft of Book 2 of the Signal Bend Heritage series, and continuing to plug away there. March wasn’t my most productive writing month ever, I have to say. To be honest, I got in my head quite a bit after a couple of very angry emails from readers who were extremely disappointed by my characterization of Gia, and of the Horde itself, in Virago (Book 1), and that, combined with surprisingly soft sales for Virago, knocked me on my butt. I had to work my way through a couple weeks where I felt sure I was done publishing completely.
The soft sales I understand. Well, I didn’t expect a return to Signal Bend to be my poorest-selling biker book ever, but I am fully aware that I don’t do, can’t do, the self-promotion required these days to get the word out. In fact, with every new release, it is increasingly clear that the industry is leaving me behind. Back in the olden days, followers saw posts on Facebook, Insta, wherever, simply because they followed a page, but those days are far behind us. Now it costs a lot of money and requires a personality I simply do not have to be Hype Girl constantly just to reach even the readers who are looking for new stuff from me.
Anyway, that’s just a mini-rant about stuff there’s nothing I can do about. I worked my way through my funk, because the truth is I love writing. I’ll write even if nobody but me reads a word, and I might as well put my stories out in the world, where they can have a little bit of life out there. I don’t do this to earn my keep; it’s basically a hobby that pays. So if you’re one of my small band of loyal readers, don’t worry. More stories are coming.
But it would be really, really cool if everybody would leave their anger and criticisms to their reviews and not email me. I’m not going to respond to angry emails, by the way. I delete them, but they take their bite on the way out the door.
But while we’re on the topic: The readers who emailed me to complain expressed their feeling that I’ve made the Horde “boring” in this new series (one said I’d “ruined” the club), and I wanted to talk about that a little.
The last thing I want to do is diminish the affection so many readers have for the original series. But I am not interested in writing the Missouri Horde as hardcore outlaws again. I’ve written dozens of books across multiple series about drug- and gun-running bikers. I’m over it.
I am interested in how the Missouri Horde struggle to stay out of that life. I would consider the club a failure, and Isaac and Len’s sacrifice of years of their life a waste, if they fell back into that dangerous world. Though I don’t have specific plans for the series arc beyond this, I intend SBH to be much less bloody and fraught than the original series, more of a (somewhat edgy, occasionally gritty) small-town romance with bikers.
I also intend most if not every female lead to be a complicated/flawed/prickly woman whom not everyone in the story world likes. You know, just like virtually every male lead in the entire genre gets to be. That’s actually the hook that opened a way into this series for me.
I disagree with those readers that Gia is a brat and the Horde is dull. But the underlying truths that Gia isn’t perfect (and that, raised by Isaac and Lilli, she is assertive, chock full of self-confidence, and not remotely shy) and the club is pretty much just running a construction company these days and doing their damnedest to stay clear of big trouble—those are intentional decisions on my part.
I just thought I’d say that up front (more or less), so you can make decisions about your interest in continuing the series. (And yes, I’m aware this is pretty much the opposite of what I’m supposed to do to promote my books.)
On that note, I’d better get out of here! Have a great month–and watch out for merry pranksters today!
If you’d like to keep up with my anemic self-promotion and get word when I have new stuff for you to read, the best way to do that is to subscribe to this blog!
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