Hazel and Elijah Get Mixed Up by Marty Vee

It’s release day for Hazel and Elijah Get Mixed Up by Marty Vee in the Fall into Love anthology. The anthology is all small-town romances with big fall vibes, and I got to edit Marty’s!

Hazel and Elijah had a one-night stand a while back, and it was unforgettable for both. So unforgettable for Elijah that he’s willing to go back to their hometown that he was essentially run out of when he was younger just so he can spend more time with Hazel.

But Hazel is a super-busy veterinarian who hates asking for help even when she needs it, and she needs to raise money for the animal society in town. When she puts together a bachelor auction, she comes under fire from the more conservative townspeople, led by Elijah’s estranged father, who wants to use her relationship with black sheep Elijah against her.

Who will prevail? Read and see! The Fall Into Love anthology is out in KU now!

All the Ways We're Wrong by Amelia Elliot

It’s release day for Amelia Elliot’s All the Ways We’re Wrong!

Movie star Ava Blum just wants to process turning 40 alone in the mountains—but when a mudslide washes away her cabin (with her inside!), she has to trek down the mountain with a hot, grumpy structural engineer who saves her life and luckily has more survivalist skills than she does.

Killian and Ava trauma-bond on their days-long hike, and even though they’re opposites in every way (he makes a list), they can’t stay away from each other. With totally incompatible lives, how are they supposed to be anything but wrong for each other?

It’s out now on Amazon and KU!

Stay by Tracy Ewens

Listen, Tracy and I talked about it, and we agree that this hero is just stop-and-double-take hot. He doesn’t know it, but he is.

World-renowned cellist Clara arrives in small-town Bodega Bay to claim her inheritance to a historic hotel owned by her late grandfather—who she never knew existed. Meanwhile, hometown boy Dylan is at a crossroads in his career when his mentor leaves him his hotel—yeah, the same hotel.

Under the terms of the will, they’ll have to live and work together for six months to renovate the place before they decide what to do with it.

Digging deep into both their pasts brings them together, but it’s the future that might push them apart.

Stay by Tracy Ewens is out now!

Does your romance writing process need a change?

One of the things I find myself talking about a lot with my Series Architecture clients is—perhaps unsurprisingly—their writing process.

Whether you identify as a planner, a pantser, a planster, or chaos demon, your writing process is your own. Whether you’ve been writing since you were a kid or you just decided to pick up writing a year ago, you probably have a good sense of what’s going to work for you and what’s not when you sit down to write.

My goal when I’m talking to clients is never to force them into a process that doesn’t work for them. If you’re a pantser, planning everything is going to drive you insane; likewise, if you’re a planner, me telling you to just make it up as you go will probably send you spiralling. And no matter how many craft books you read, following one system the way that author prescribes is likely not going to fully work for you because it’s going to feel too narrow and not aligned with your own process.

This is not to say that your writing process should never change! Sometimes you need to evolve, and you always want to be improving, right? So what are the things you tell yourself you have to do when you’re putting a story together and when you write, and what would happen if you just…didn’t do them? Or what would happen if you tried something different that you believed you could never do?

For example, you might think, “working under pressure is great for me—it focuses me and gets me out of my head so I can just channel all my thoughts into prose.”

Or is it that you're actually just worried that it has to be perfect so you’ve been procrastinating on it for a long time, and then when you finally have to start writing because of the deadline, you’re frustrated that it’s not coming out the perfect way you intended, and so you have to settle for whatever you end up writing because time’s up? (Not speaking from experience here at all.) That pressure is maybe anxiety you don’t actually need. So what if you started early and broke down your writing into manageable daily word counts (500 words? 1000?) rather than cramming writing the last 30K in a week?

Another example: I used to just think “okay, I’m gonna write, and my brain will just take me where I need to go.” This, it turns out, was putting way too much stock in what my brain could do while writing. What actually would happen would be that I would stall out, start panicking, and then spiral into thinking I sucked, procrastinate because it felt so hard, and then get behind on everything. But surprise! I’m actually a planner/planster, not a pantser. Once I realized I actually need to outline quite heavily before I even start writing, everything changed. (Something I would have really liked to know before quitting my PhD dissertation.) I need to do the big thinking first and work it all out in my head to know where I’m going, and after that, writing is a breeze.

That’s the process that I’ve discovered works for me, and it may not work for you. But take some time to evaluate what you’re doing now and maybe try changing some things up—if they don’t work, okay, just go back to what you were doing before. Read some craft books and implement some advice in there that could naturally slot into your current process. Talk with other writer friends to see how they write. Adapt and evolve to keep growing as a romance author.

So that’s your challenge for this month: take a long, hard look at how you write, and evaluate what’s serving you and what’s not.

How can I help you write better, faster, stronger, harder? Head over here and see how we can work together!

Birthdays and Bachelors by Elle Rush

Gloria only joked to her friends that she needed a boyfriend for her 30th birthday--but they made it happen, or at least set her up with some bachelors. Now she has more dates than she knows what to do with. Between her high school sweetheart, the billionaire, the town bad boy (there's a less polite word for him, but this is a sweet romance here!), PLUS the bonus new-in-town doctor, she's got more dates than she knows what to do with.

The new-in-town doctor, Daniel, is determined to win Gloria's heart. But with all this competition, how can he stand out? He's accidentally witnessed all of her dates be disasters, so he's gotta pull out all the stops to show her he's worth the risk.

This is such a great premise, and so much fun! It’s part of Elle Rush’s Holiday Beach series, in which each book is a novella based around a holiday. Birthdays and Bachelors is available now!

First Impressions of You by Gabriela Graciosa Guedes

Pride and Prejudice fans, get ready!

It's release day for Gabriela Graciosa Guedes’s P&P retelling, First Impressions of You!

Luiza is a struggling plus-size actress from Brazil who's desperate to stay in the US and make her dreams come true. She needs a job that will sponsor her for a visa, and the theme park she's been working at has a well-respected theater division that has sponsored visas in the past.

Against all odds, she gets the job, but she has to work with brooding Winter Davis, former child star and current snob, who seems to think the theater work--and everyone around him--is beneath him.

Their on-stage battles and explosive chemistry infuriate and intrigue Luiza. But even when she comes to understand him better, she can't let him stand in the way of her dreams for her future.

Tons of steam and banter in this modern take on P&P--it's available on Amazon and KU now!

Would you spend $35K to publish your book?

So, would you spend $35K to indie-publish your book? 

Listen, I know the answer to that question already.

But someone DID, and I nearly keeled over when I heard about it.

Here’s the video that breaks down how exactly this woman spent $35K (projected to eventually be more) on getting her book independently published.

My DMs exploded when I posted this on my Instagram a while back, so I thought it was worth talking about here.

So, let me say upfront, if you’ve published a book before and are thinking “but I didn’t spend that much!” or you’ve never published a book and are thinking “I don’t WANT to spend that much,” you should not be worrying—this is not a typical amount to spend on producing a book.

Chelsea has a much bigger platform than most debut writers start with—she has a built-in audience, albeit in a totally different field, but one that wants to support her, so she could aim high and know that her people are there for her. (I do wonder if this messed up her also-bought algorithm on Amazon, though, if her audience is not typically romance readers—the also-boughts are determined by what the people buying her book read, and you want those recommendations to be in the same genre so that they come up when people are looking for similar books.)

She also clearly has a lot of money to spend up front, which most new (or even established) romance writers don’t. It is normal to NOT spend $35K on a book—I would wager that most writers are putting in maybe a thousand or two TOTAL, and that’s still a lot of money to put into an investment that you might not recoup, especially for a debut book. But it’s an investment in future you and your ability to continue to write and get better and get more visibility that you hope will pay off in the future.

There are lots of things that she says in here that I agree with, specifically around genre fiction not getting its flowers—and its money—when it does keep the lights on in publishing, and her very healthy understanding of criticism, confidence, and fear.

Dos and Don’ts to Take Away from This Video

I agree with her spending the bulk of her money on editing and promotion. (I’m not sure what category her cover art ended up, but I’d also spend money on that.) Obviously, as an editor, I’m going to tell you to spend your money on editing, but OMG, $10K??? Like, I think I’m a great editor, but I’ve never approached anywhere near charging $10K for one book. All my romance editor friends were similarly befuddled. (There is something to say here one day about how romance as a genre devalues itself in so many ways, including how much money writers spend on producing their books and on pricing their books—a post for another time). If someone is trying to get you to pay that for a romance edit, something weird is going on there.

Do spend the money on getting your book into the hands of people who will talk about it. Organic discovery is great, but it’s incredibly hard when there are so many books vying for attention. You don’t have to necessarily send out physical copies if that’s not something you can afford, but you can send out eARCs to book influencers and on NetGalley or other ARC distribution platforms as a way to get your book out there.

And obviously don’t worry about physical book tours yet. Again, Chelsea has a substantial audience already—results not typical.

I’m very confused about the $6K she spent on production. It sounds like it was mostly labour, but most people order an author copy from Amazon before publishing, and that’s it. Don’t stress too much about paper thickness and ink colour and all of that.

I’m assuming Chelsea’s cover art cost a pretty penny because it was an oil painting she commissioned. Oil painting isn’t the typical style for romance novels right now, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. But we all know we judge a book by its cover and we've all bought books because of their covers, right? So it’s worth putting a sizeable amount of budget towards a beautiful cover that’s on-trend and designed by someone who knows what romance readers are looking for in order to attract the right kind of attention.

Be realistic in your goals. Chelsea said she needed 7000 books sold to break even on her 35K, but for most debuts, that’s probably not happening. Even with her huge platform, I don’t know if she will be able to meet her admittedly ambitious goal of 100K(!) books sold. Social media and viral sensations make it look easy—but the reality behind that is that it’s often not their first book by the time they go viral so they’ve got experience and a backlist helping them along, and you don’t know the kind of money they (or their publisher if they're trad) are putting into promotion. Some of them are genuinely organic word-of-mouth via TikTok or Insta, but many are manufactured and spending thousands of dollars to get there.

Spend within your means. Indie publishing is not a get-rich-quick scheme—it takes a lot of time and money and strategy to start earning out regularly on your books. Don’t spend all your money at once, hoping you’ll be able to earn it back and put it into the next book.

Moral of the story: you do not have to spend $35K to have a successful book (and please don't!)—but it is going to require a ton of hard work, no matter how much you do end up spending. Spend that money and time and effort wisely.

What was your reaction to this video (beyond “oh HELL no”)? Let me know!