Release Day!

Hi!

I'm bouncing up and down here like a little kid, because today is the day that Ghost's Dilemma is being released!

So first, let me indulge in some shameless promotion here, because I can:

***New M/M Fantasy Romance*** 

Ghost's Dilemma by Morwen Navarre 

Release date: February 4, 2015

"I'm leaving my village in a crisis and walking out on my alpha and mate. I won't be forgiven."

A fierce male witch is torn from his protective lover's bed... to face down a deadly threat. A spellbinding tale of devotion and love.

Buy it!
Torquere Press http://goo.gl/Ngn2xU
Amazon http://goo.gl/Qf7k4r
Goodreads http://goo.gl/aaXfkB

Ghost's Sight (Book 1) on sale for a limited time http://goo.gl/w1WDRL

Launch Party! 

Feb 5 http://goo.gl/UzyNkn
***GIVEAWAYS***
Raffle#1 Win an ecopy of Ghost's Dilemma http://goo.gl/0LubX9
Raffle#2 Win a $25 Amazon Gift Card http://goo.gl/3ZXAZC

Excerpt http://goo.gl/z8IElx

Have I squealed enough?

The truth is I thought Ghost's Sight was a standalone novella, a sweet little story that I wrote because the lovely PT Walden said I could do it. I submitted it, and was beyond thrilled to have it accepted for publication, but I still really thought I was done with Ghost and Gerry.

Characters tend to take a different view sometimes, and they were no exception. Ghost and Gerry wanted to share more of their journeys, and so there I was in November 2013, writing their story for my NaNoWriMo submission. What surprised me was how happy some readers were to find out that there would be a second book. Most likely, there will be at least a third. I'm already getting prodded by the pair of them.

But now I'm curious. I know what excites me as a reader when I find a book that's becoming a series, but what is it that hooks you, either as a reader or as a writer?

More shameless self-promotion...

***New M/M Fantasy Romance*** 

Ghost's Dilemma by Morwen Navarre 

Release date: February 4, 2015

"I'm leaving my village in a crisis and walking out on my alpha and mate. I won't be forgiven."

A fierce male witch is torn from his protective lover's bed... to face down a deadly threat. A spellbinding tale of devotion and love.

Preorder
Torquere Press http://goo.gl/Ngn2xU
Amazon http://goo.gl/Qf7k4r
Goodreads http://goo.gl/aaXfkB

Ghost's Sight (Book 1) on sale for a limited time http://goo.gl/w1WDRL

Launch Party Feb 5 http://goo.gl/UzyNkn
***GIVEAWAYS***
Raffle#1 Win an ecopy of Ghost's Dilemma http://goo.gl/0LubX9
Raffle#2 Win a $25 Amazon Gift Card http://goo.gl/3ZXAZC

Excerpt http://goo.gl/z8IElx

(Can you tell I'm getting excited?)

Launch Day Giveaways and Author Jitters...

It's almost Launch Day for Ghost's Dilemma!

Lots to share:

We have a Fan Page on Facebook:  Ghost's Sight

And we're having a Launch Party, with giveaways! I'd love to see you all there.

Here's the scoop on all the goodies:

***New M/M Fantasy Romance*** Ghost's Dilemma February 4, 2015
"I'm leaving my village in a crisis and walking out on my alpha and mate. I won't be forgiven."
A fierce male witch is torn from his protective lover's bed to face down a deadly threat. A spellbinding tale of devotion and love.
Goodreads http://goo.gl/aaXfkB
***Now available for pre-order on Torquere Books http://goo.gl/Ngn2xU***
You're Invited to the Launch Party Feb 5 http://goo.gl/UzyNkn
Pinterest http://goo.gl/z10TuP
Win an ecopy or a $25 Gift Card
Raffle#1 http://goo.gl/0LubX9
Raffle#2 http://goo.gl/3ZXAZC

Now, back to our regularly scheduled rambling. Yes, I have jitters! You'd think I'd be better about this, but I want people to read my book, and love my characters. I do, of course, but they're mine. I should love them.

But after three rounds of edits, two rounds of proofreading, and looking over a galley, I'm still wondering if I should have tweaked this, or massaged that. I still wonder if I got it right. My books are my children, and like any parent, I have trouble letting them out the door without fussing over a scarf, or slipping them some extra cash.

My book's ready. It's me that's not.

My reading challenge...

I've been challenged! My goal is to read at least 150 books before next January 15, because the very lovely Joanna Talbot knows that good readers make better writers. I'm off to a good start, too! I've loaded up my Kindle, and I'm raring to read.

Now mind you, I'll be sneaking in my reading in between proofreading for my own upcoming release, and I have a confession to make. It's an absolute treat to read someone else's work right now. The more I read my own work, the more I cringe and want to tweak things. It's a monumental effort not to change things. Big things. Huge, sweeping changes, and lots of them.

But this late in the game, that would be a disaster. My amazing editor, Nicole, has pored over my mess, and poked at all the sloppy grammar, chronology slips and logic fails. The proofreaders have outdone themselves, and found typos and missing words that my brain helpfully fixed for me when I was reading. There's no way I'm going to ruin all that hard work, not now. Now it's time to hike up the big author shimapan and stop tweaking.

And this is why this challenge is coming at such a good time. I have an excuse to send back the proof without trying to tweak one more time. I can get lost in someone else's words again, and I can't wait.

Between holidays...

Somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas lies chaos.

Don't get me wrong. I love a good bout of chaos. Nothing shakes up a book like having the universe upended, and as a life lesson, chaos can't be beat. We learn to think on our feet, to adapt to a new reality on the fly.

But bloody buggering hells... enough!

I've had a love/hate relationship with holidays for a while now, starting when my dad announced, two days before Christmas '08, that he was moving to Texas. Right after the New Year. Now, I can understand wanting to get away from the cold and snow up here in the Northeast, but my heart broke at the thought of my dad being 2,000 miles away, instead of a 2-hour drive from me.

Then there was Thanksgiving '12, when my stepmom called as I was in the middle of prepping the turkey. Note to all of you: do not answer the phone if your hand is up a turkey's ass. It's going to be someone telling you something you don't want to hear. In my case, it was hearing that my dad had end stage cancer, and was coming back home to die.

This year, I waited until the day after Thanksgiving to discover I have kidney stones, like dad before me. I've always been my dad's child, so color me unsurprised. But now the whirlwind of getting ready for the holidays includes trying to get an appointment with a doctor that's less than two and a half months away (really!) and listening for the sound of my dad's laughter.

Maybe I'll skip holidays from now on. November will be NaNo and December will be Winter Solstice. Much better! But then I'd miss the turkey, and the family, and the traditional chaos...

And eureka!

I have managed to post 54,900 words to the NaNo word counting widget, and that means as of November 20th, I have completed NaNo for the fifth year in a row. So, yay, me! I'll pat myself on the back and crow a bit. At least until I go back and read the results of the frenzied output, which is when I'll open a bottle of wine and whimper while I read.

I've also gone through the first round of comments from my editor, and while it was a lot of work, it was also truly exciting. I'm well past the stage of feeling like every comment is a personal criticism. Instead, I view the comments as a chance to see my story from a fresh viewpoint. I wrote it, and edited it, and tweaked it some more. I know what I think I'm saying, but I need that new pair of eyes to tell me if I was making sense. That's the whole point, isn't it?

Schedules being what they are, ten days is not a lot of time to process a first round of edits, but I think the intense focus was helpful. I couldn't get away with putting the manuscript aside for a few days, or I'd wind up rushing and making a complete mess of it. I needed to really immerse myself in the editing process, to the point where I was dreaming changes. It was engrossing, yes, but it was very productive and (I hope!) worthwhile.

There's more to do. There will be a second round of comments, and then the proofreader will go through the manuscript. I'll look at that set of comments, and finally, we'll send my baby off to production. I get one more look, when the galley is ready, and then that's it. I'll have a book!

NaNo and Edits, oh my!

I like a good challenge. There's nothing like it to get me moving, and that's probably why I'm doing the National Novel Writer's Month challenge again this year. After all, my novel from last year was accepted by Torquere Press, so it's definitely possible for this to lead to publication.

So, for the fifth consecutive year, I'll spend the 30 days of November churning out at least 50,000 words of pure, raw draft. It'll be a glorious mess, and when I take a moment to breathe, sometime in December, I'll be ready to tackle the mess and sort out the bits that shine from the dross that hides them.

That's the theory, anyway. Even though this was the formula that worked for me for four years, I've decided to raise my personal bar. You see, I'm also going to be working with my editor on the manuscript for Ghost's Dilemma, that novel from last year. The one which is scheduled to be published in February of 2015.

In a twisted sort of way, I think it's going to help. One of the hardest parts of NaNo is resisting the urge to go back and edit what I've written. Of course, if I go back and edit, I slow myself down and I'll never make my work count for the day, which means it's just a bit harder the following day. My inner editor has heart attacks and fits over the roughness of the draft, and I've had to appease her with allowing small typo fixes.

But this year, I can turn my inner editor loose on Ghost's Dilemma, and while she's besotted with the opportunity to revise that manuscript, I can work on NaNo without the inner nagging for once. This could be the best year yet, as long as I keep the manuscripts straight.