Category Archives: Brand

My Kansas Adventure Photos!

Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s about time you posted pictures. So here you go folks, and not necessarily in any order!

one of the boxes of my books

Ah, one of three boxes of my author copies. Even before I cracked open the box, I held one copy that my publisher had in her stuff that she wanted me to sign. Anyway, you should have seen the Canada Customs guy’s look when I declared them and the ones I bought.
Me: I bought some books.
Him: $700?
Me: Also have the author copies of my novel.
Him: smiled and stamped my declaration form.

the venue at the Kansas History Museum

We were in the large double tent in the middle of the photo. This picture was taken on the advance scouting mission that Carla and I went on Friday afternoon.

Author Galand Nuchols, my editor Carla Ralston, author Jacque Graham and me

My book is in the top of the rack on the right. It’s also displayed on an easel in a more prominent position… see here.

the adult and YA titles. A Shadow in the Past is on the right

I thought the best feeling I ever had was holding my book for the first time. It still remains special but I think my first sale was even more special.

my first sale – photo by Vivian Zabel

What a rush selling my first book! I can’t put the feeling of euphoria into words. Then I went on and sold 6 more!

chatting up a buyer and her hubby who gives the thumbs up for the purchase – photo by Vivian Zabel
Janet Brown, me, and Galund Nuchols with our books that debuted at the Kansas Book Festival

Here I am with my editor, Carla. We had such a good time working on A Shadow in the Past. There were times that we both thought we shared the same brain we had such a great connection.

Carla and me … and I’m wearing my “ruby slippers”

Even with the fun as I had in Kansas, memories I’ll cherish forever, as Dorothy said in The Wizard of Oz – there’s no place like home.

Now I’m looking towards the launch in my hometown on September 22nd.

 

It’s launch day for A Shadow in the Past at the Kansas Book Festival!

The hard work of setting up this morning is done and now it’s launch time! The months of sweating through the final revisions, copy edits and proof approval have paid off and I’m holding my baby in my hands. It’s as beautiful as Vivian told me when she first got a copy back from the printer.

So, if you’re in Topeka, drop by the Kansas Museum of History at 6425 SW 6th Avenue. I’d love to see you, not to mention sell and sign you a copy of my book.

My novel’s cover created by Aidana WillowRaven

Suggested Tweet:

Launch day for @RobertsoKing’s debut novel A Shadow in the Past published by @4RV! http://ow.ly/d3sZU #shadowpast #KSbookfest #4RV #lahe

My Kansas Adventure -Day 2 Begins

We have to be up, eaten, and into our glad rags and over to the venue before 7:00 this morning. I set our alarm last night before falling asleep sometime between 9:30 and 10:00, but when I woke this morning about 4:30, I decided to stay up.

Today is going to be more exciting than yesterday even. Okay, it will start out with a lot of hard work setting up out booth but then it will be time to sell books. I brought postcards, bookmarks and business cards with me for promotion and hopefully that will generate interest in me and my stuff.

My red shoes will go i my tote bag, but will only come out for a photo op or two when I’m on solid ground. We’re outdoors under tents so the only thing they would be good for in that instance would be aerating the soil.

Well must start getting ready because it’s just after 5:00 and we have to get our skates on. More from Kansas later.

 

Sophie’s Turn by Nicky Wells makes its Sapphire Star Publishing Debut!

LAHE logo

 

After a brief vacation, Sophie’s Turn, by fellow loveahappyending.com author Nicky Wells, returns all freshly pressed, edited and ready for show.

About Sophie’s Turn

Slapper.  Slut.  Adulteress.  These are hardly words that Sophie Penhalligan would normally use to describe herself.  Yet this is exactly how she is behaving, all things considered, even if she isn’t quite married to Tim yet.  And it’s all happening because her past is coming to tempt her!  Nine years ago, she met her teenage idol and rock star extraordinaire, Dan, up close and personal.  Well, almost.  Now Dan has crash-landed back in her life.  How could Tim ever stand a chance against the charming, handsome singer?  How could she?

Sophie, now twenty-eight and a budding newspaper journalist, is happily embroiled in a relationship with Tim, her boyfriend of two years.  Until recently, she was confident that Tim would eventually propose—probably as soon as he could get his act together.  But just as Tim’s persistent inaction is beginning to cast a cloud over their relationship, Dan’s sudden reappearance turns Sophie’s world upside down.  Thus unfolds a roller-coaster of events including an ill-fated trip to Paris with Tim, a night of unfulfilled romance with Dan, Sophie and Tim’s engagement party gate-crashed by Dan, and Sophie’s professional secondment to accompany Dan’s band on their revival tour—at Dan’s special request and very much against her will.

And then, one fine day in Paris, Sophie suddenly finds herself engaged to Dan while her erstwhile fiancé Tim is…  well, doing whatever it is Tim does back in London.   What is she to do now?  Who wouldn’t give anything to meet their favorite star, let alone marry him?

Find out how Sophie gets into this impossible situation, and how she turns it around, in Sophie’s Turn, the honest, funny and sometimes bittersweet story of one woman’s entanglement with a rock star.

Excerpt from Sophie’s Turn by Nicky Wells

“What the hell is going on here?” I hissed, trying to prevent others from hearing our exchange.
“Oh, Sophie, Dan’s turned up. Isn’t it amazing?” she beamed at me.
“I can see that,” I kept hissing, “But what is he doing here?”
Rachel was quite drunk herself and looked at me with those bleary eyes that usually meant she was up to no good. “Sophie,” she declared solemnly and rather loudly, “you have broken the man’s heart. He has come to reclaim you.” She wobbled unsteadily and I gripped her arm. Usually one to hold her liquor, party-girl Rachel had clearly gone too far tonight.
“Shh!” I admonished. “Will you keep your voice down? What are you talking about?”
“Dan is completely besotted with you, and he said he couldn’t bear the thought of you getting engaged to Tim so he had to…hic…come and check him out…hic!” Oh God, she had the hiccups. She would have to spend the night in the guest room. Once Rachel got the hiccups, she was beyond salvation. I gave her twenty minutes before she collapsed. I had to extract critical information fast.
“Why did you introduce him to Tim?” I continued my interrogation. “Couldn’t you have sent him away?”
“Oh no, Sophie. I couldn’t turn this lovely, heartbroken man away.” She looked at me with big, innocent, and totally unfocused eyes. “In fact, we were just looking for you. You seemed to have… hic… hic… hic…disapp-hic-eared.”
“What did you say to Tim about who Dan was?” I needed to know.
“That he was Dan, of course. Your boy-hic-friend from Tusk!” She dropped this bombshell completely nonchalantly.
“You what?” I squeaked. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“No, I’m s-hic-erious! Ti-hic-im thought it was very funny. Hic.”
I wrung my hands and barely prevented myself from tearing at my hair. If Tim had thought it was funny, he must have thought Rachel was being facetious or winding him up. He had seen her drunk before — the experience hadn’t done anything to endear her to him in any way —so it was likely that he hadn’t paid the slightest bit of heed to the truth she was spouting. But I had to move, and fast.
“You,” I said to Rachel, grabbing her by the shoulders and steering her toward the stairs. “You have had enough to drink. You are going to bed.”
“I hic-am?” Rachel asked, surprised.
“Indeed,” I confirmed grimly and marched her up the stairs. “Right, here you are. Guest room. Bed. Now.” I propelled her forward and she flopped on the bed like a rag doll.
“Very ti-hic-hic-red,” she mumbled before passing out.
I, on the other hand, had sobered up dramatically and had only one thought left: damage limitation. I blundered back downstairs, racing quite unladylike in my high heels, and skidded to a halt in the lounge. There they were, companionably sitting in front of the stereo, playing DJ.
I clattered across the floor, grabbing a bottle of champers and three glasses off a table as I went. Tim looked up, and then sprang to his feet.
“And here she is,” he announced to Dan with no small measure of proprietary pride. “Doesn’t she look gorgeous?”
Dan rose to his feet, somewhat unsteadily, and looked me up and down. A sad smile played on his face for just the briefest of moments.
“She looks stunning, indeed. Congratulations to you both.” He walked over to me and planted a chaste kiss on my cheek. “Well done,” he said softly, and Tim beamed gratefully, completely unaware that the comment was aimed solely at me. In fact, he seemed completely besotted by Dan’s manly, famous presence.
“Dan here and I were just discussing rock music,” he informed me as though Dan were his new best friend.
I shuddered for a moment. God forbid.
“Dan has some very interesting views about the movement, you know?”
I winced and smiled a secret apologetic smile at Dan, but he was too drunk to notice anything patronizing in Tim’s comment. I had to separate the two before things got out of hand. Luckily, one of our other guests absolved me of thinking up more ruses by descending on Tim and whisking him away to the kitchen.
Dan and I regarded each other in silence.
“You do look beautiful,” Dan repeated, suddenly sounding a whole lot more sober.
I wanted to cry. “What are you doing here?” I whispered, not trusting my voice.
“I don’t really know,” he acknowledged. “I just felt…lonely. At a loose end. I had to see you and convince myself that…well, that it really is too late. You know?”
I was simultaneously touched and petrified. “I thought we’d agreed…,” I started, but Dan interrupted immediately.

About Nicky Wells: Romance that Rocks Your World!

Rock On! Nicky Wells writes fun and glamorous contemporary romance featuring a rock star and the girl next door.  She recently signed her work with U.S. publisher, Sapphire Star Publishing.  Nicky loves rock music, dancing, and eating lobsters.  When she’s not writing, Nicky is a wife, mother, and occasional teaching assistant.

Originally born in Germany, Nicky moved to the United Kingdom in 1993, and currently lives in Lincoln with her husband and their two boys.  In a previous professional life, Nicky worked as a researcher and project manager for an international Human Resources research firm based in London and Washington, D.C.

Visit Nicky on her blog where you can find articles, interviews, radio interviews and, of course, an ongoing update on her work in progress, the second and third parts of the Rock Star Romance Trilogy.  You can also follow Nicky on Twitter and find her on Facebook.  Nicky is a featured author on the innovative reader/author project, loveahappyending.com and has joined the Romantic Novelists’ Association. Nicky also has author pages at Sapphire Star Publishing and, of course, Goodreads.

You can buy Sophie’s Turn from the following:

Today I welcome author Joanna Lambert to Celtic Connexions

Joanna Lambert joins me today here in my hometown along the shore of the St. Lawrence River. The sun is shining, it’s not oppressively hot and there is a beautiful breeze whispering through the trees surrounding my back yard. Since it’s such a nice day, I thought we would sit out on my deck, chat over some ice-cold lemonade and watch the birds and other wildlife come drink at either the birdbath or the waterfall fountain I have in one corner of the deck. I hope you’re not allergic to bees because they come to drink, too.

Your novels in the original Behind Blue Eyes Trilogy are all less than 300 pages. Did you ever contemplate putting them together into one novel? If so, what changed your mind?

Actually the manuscript was originally planned as one large book .  When I submitted to my current publisher, however, they would only take it in a two or three way split as it was too large and would have made the resale price prohibitive.

I know you self-published these books, was that a consideration in making three books?

Yes, as I said above, the publishers  liked the book but as they work out sale prices on page count, the resale price would have been astronomical.  I really wanted to keep the manuscript as one book and knew there was no way I could cut anything out or change the storyline to make it smaller.  So there was no alternative, I had to split it. I decided on a three way rather than a two and have to say, although it was hard work doing the rewrites, the whole thing turned out really well!

Had you tried the traditional route before deciding on “going it alone”?

Yes, I had sent the original manuscript to several agents.   I did get some really positive feedback but it was always a case of ‘thanks but no thanks’ and there were comments about it being a very large manuscript.  It was when I came to self-publish and was faced with having to split my work that I wondered whether the whole thing might have been a more attractive package had I marketed it as three separate books.

Will there be more involving the characters you’ve introduced us to after Between Today and Yesterday?

Yes, there will be one last book before I move onto something completely new.   This time Matt and Ella are very much in the background and it is the young adults who feature in Between Today and Yesterday who are the central characters who drive the plot.  I’m not quite there yet but what happens is going to be every bit as surprising as what goes on in Between Today and Yesterday.

Your original covers on your first three books were attractive, why did you decide to go with something more, shall I say bold? Have you noticed any increase in sales since your new covers went live?

I did like my original covers very much.  I chose them and felt they were right for each of the books.  However, it was when I had lunch with a fellow writer that she emphasised the importance of being ‘branded’.  She put me in touch with her own cover designer Jane Dixon Smith who worked with me to produce the new look.  I wanted to have a character on each of the covers.  So we have Ella, Andy and Matt on the trilogy and Marcie on the cover of Between Today and Yesterday.  The first three were done when the trilogy had been out for some time but there was definitely a slight surge in sales – although people who had already bought got in touch to say they were keen to get a set with the new covers!

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

I think self-belief and determination are both very important.  The writing journey can sometimes be difficult – there are good days you have when things go right and bad days when either the inspiration dries up or no matter what you write you’re not happy with.  When that happens you need to stay calm, hang on in there and convince yourself it’s just a passing phase.   Better still, close down the computer and come back to it later.  You’ll be surprised what a difference that can make!

The other piece of advice is get yourself an editor.  Having written four books now I know being the writer makes you far too close to your work and you just don’t see things that a fresh pair of eyes will pick up.  Believe me, a good editor can make all the difference!

When you’re not writing, what other hobbies do you enjoy?

Writing does take up a good deal of my time, but I also like to read – I have a Kindle but do occasionally get given the odd paperback to read as well.  I’m working part time now and allocate one of my free days for seeing friends and work colleagues I’ve kept in touch with over the years.   It’s great to meet for lunch and catch up on news.   I also love theatre (we’re really lucky in Bath having the Theatre Royal where we get a lot of pre-London productions).  Oh and I love the cinema too – we’ve a really good multiplex in the city.

Thanks for joining me here today on Celtic Connexions. It was good to see you. Maybe next time, we can take a little walking tour along the waterfront.

The Star Child Cover Reveal Event

The world is about to be cloaked in darkness.
Only one can stop the night.

Kellen St. James has spent his entire life being overlooked as an unwanted, ordinary, slightly geeky kid. That is until a beautiful girl, one who has haunted his dreams for the past eleven years of his life, shows up spinning tales of a prophecy. Not just any old prophecy either, but one in which Kellen plays a key role.

Suddenly, Kellen finds himself on the run through a Celtic underworld of faeries and demons, angels and gods, not to mention a really ticked off pack of hellhounds, all in order to save the world from darkness. But will they make it in time?

About The Author:

Stephanie Keyes was born in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania and has worked for the past twelve years as a corporate educator and curriculum designer in the Telecommunications industry. She holds a Master’s degree in Education with a specialization in Instructional Technology from Duquesne University and a B.S. in Management Information Systems from Robert Morris University. She is a classically trained clarinetist, but also plays the saxophone and sings. When she’s not writing, she is a wife to a wonderfully supportive husband and mother to two little boys whom she cites as her inspiration for all things writing. The Star Child is Mrs. Keyes’ debut novel.

Website: http://www.stephaniekeyes.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/stephaniekeyes
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stephanie-Keyes/150860604966160

Giveaway Details (Open for US and UK only):

Celtic knot designed antique bookmark – will go very good with this book!

Rafflecopter link for the giveaway: Smiley

http://www.inkspellpublishing.com/1/post/2012/07/star-child-cover-reveal.html

The Unveiling…

Presenting the new Melanie Robertson-King “brand”

As children, we’ve been taught that bragging, boasting or tooting our own horn is not an attractive quality and we shouldn’t do it.

But authors, well we have to be “out” there. Launching and signing our books, marketing ourselves. Besides good writing, being approachable to our readers, there is still something else that’s important. What’s that you say?

Your author “brand”. A catchy tag line on your products – website, business cards, etc. will make you stand out.

And in keeping with that… I now unveil the “new” Melanie Robertson-King “brand”.

Please visit my website melanierobertson-king.com and sign my guestbook with your feedback about my new “brand”.