'Til All the Seas Run Dry by Eliza MacArthur

Listen, if you want a masterclass in yearning and pining and longing, let me introduce you to Callum McLeod.

The man yearns for a THOUSAND years for his lost love (oops, did I mention he’s a vampire?) and arranges his entire life to make the world a better place as she would have wanted—and then finds out that hey, she didn’t die a thousand years ago and ALSO she’s not human.

She’s actually a selkie and he’s kept her skin all these years, not realizing that’s what it was. So now Jory has a chance to go back to her selkie life—that she originally gave up for him—even though her lost love Callum (who she also thought was dead for a thousand years) is right there. Which one will she choose?

Eliza MacArthur writes beautiful, aching emotion so well, and you will fall in love with Callum and Jory! ‘Til All the Seas Run Dry is out now!

Is it time to discontinue your romance series?

I did a presentation to the Ottawa Romance Writers’ group earlier this month about The Dos and Don’ts of Being a Romance Novelist, and one of the participants asked a great question at the end (and one that I’ve been meaning to write something about for a long time!).

The question was: How do you know when you should stop writing a series that doesn’t seem to be getting any traction?

I’m sure as readers or consumers of media, we’ve all experienced the frustration of not getting the end of a series. We can all name a TV show that we loved that ended on a perpetual cliffhanger, never to be resolved, or perhaps less often, a book series that a trad publisher decided not to continue to put money into. But what about if you’re on the other side of that as an indie author?

So here are some considerations to help you decide what to do:

1) Why is it that the series hasn’t gotten enough traction?

Be very, very honest with yourself here and analyze what’s going on. Are the covers not giving the reader a good first impression? (Are they on trend with other covers in your subgenre?) Are your blurbs and marketing materials not intriguing or unique or clear enough to get the reader to buy? Are the books priced too high? Have you put in the work to market them and get them in front of your target audience? Is the quality of the writing and editing not as good as it could be?

Do your research, ask your readers and impartial observers, and be very real with yourself. Are you willing or able to put in the work to fix these problems? That might get expensive—i.e. recovering all the books so far in the series, re-editing, doing additional marketing, etc. Which begs the question…

2) Is it worth it to continue to put the time and money towards this series?

Not only to revamp the previously published books in the series, but also for the ones to come. More books in this series means more money put towards editing, cover design, and promotion, and it takes you away from books that you could write that might be more successful. And if the books you’ve already written in the series aren’t helping to fund much of the next books still to come, do you have the budget to continue? The books in this current series may be the books of your heart right now, but if they’re not selling, it might be time to consider how you can rework the larger ideas of this series and eventually repurpose them for a different series that might do better for you down the line.

3) Do you have a full series already?

A complete series is a great thing to have in your backlist. If a new reader falls in love with your writing and goes back to read all your old stuff, they might buy the full series immediately to consume, rather than one standalone book at a time. And if all your books are linked in the same extended universe (which I do usually recommend doing!), a full series is even more of an easy sell. So, is it worth it to finish off the series in this case?

4) How do you feel about this series?

When you’re an indie author, it’s all on you to decide if it’s worth it to continue the series. Are you happy with the quality of the writing? Have you had good feedback from readers, or has it been crickets? Are you still excited to continue the series or get to that final book? Especially if you haven’t had a ton of great feedback from readers about the series, you may have lost enthusiasm for it—that’s normal. It’s time for some soul-searching about whether you should keep going with it.

Even if you do decide to discontinue a series, I do not want you to feel like it was a waste of time or that you didn’t get anything out of it. I especially do not want you to see this as a failure AT ALL. Every single writer, even the most popular or successful, has books that just don’t hit. And every book is a learning experience. Writing those books has improved your writing skills, has made you more aware of the things in your author career that you might have to spend more time/energy/money on, and is going to make your next book and/or series stronger. As much as I’ve asked here “is it worth it?” to help you decide whether to continue the series or not, I think there is always something worthwhile in the experience of getting these books out into the world.

Have you ever discontinued a series? What made you decide to? (I genuinely want to hear! Let me know in the comments!)

A Darling Aviator by Lark Holiday

Food influencer Elle does NOT want to be on her fiancé’s dream trip to Alaska, yet here she is. It’s really a relationship of convenience, but he’s done so much for her that she wants to do something for him. But when he runs off into the wilderness, he throws off all of her meticulous plans for her life.

The additional complication? The grumpy pilot and guide who she finds herself attracted to. She enlists Mac to help find her wayward fiancé, but in their search, she discovers that she might need to blow up her carefully curated life in order to be happy...and that Mac might be the key to that happiness.

Grumpy-sunshine, NO cheating (promise!), lighthearted fun in this small-town Alaska sweet romance! A Darling Aviator is available everywhere in print, ebook, and audio now!

Rising Courage by Heather Moll

How do we feel about kidnapping in our romances? How do we feel when the hero and heroine are kidnapped together?
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This is a Pride and Prejudice variation where Darcy still makes his terrible proposal to Elizabeth and gets shot down. Elizabeth takes herself out for a walk after this, and kidnappers mistake her for Anne de Bourgh. Darcy sees her getting kidnapped and he gets taken along with her so that he can protect her (and also ‘cause he’s rich and can be ransomed for $$).
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Now, stuck together (gotta love that forced proximity!) and desperate to escape, Darcy and Elizabeth have to work together, get past their misunderstandings, and save themselves from danger.
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Adventure and angst await! Rising Courage is out now on KU!

Romance = power?

Let me float my theory that romance is all about power.

I feel like that seems like a very cynical thing for a romance editor to say, but I promise it’s not quite as bad as it sounds!

More specifically, I think romance is about power and parity and balance. (Is that making it a little bit better?) And this should work for any relationship, whether it’s straight or queer, or if it’s a couple or more than two people.

Power isn’t about physical strength or money or social capital, but really about one person having a stronger position over another at different points in the story. And what happens in romance novels is that the main characters are constantly jockeying for position over the other and eventually coming to balance each other out so that they share the same amount of power and one isn’t dominating the other. 

If you’ve been around me for even just a little while, you’ll know my favourite book of all time is Pride and Prejudice (#basicbitch, but zero shame about that), one of the foundational texts for romance. Darcy and Elizabeth are perhaps not matched in socio-economic power (and also in terms of gender, because patriarchy, which I’ll come back to), but they are matched in terms of wit and the power they have within their initially combative relationship. Every interaction is one-upping each other each time to prove their power, until the end where they finally figure things out and their power dynamic evens out. The internal power dynamic eventually comes to parity, and that’s where the HEA happens.

P&P is the blueprint for this, but all romances are playing out this dynamic, no matter if there’s also an external power dynamic between the characters—for example, in a rivals-to-lovers workplace romance where they’re gunning for the same job. This dynamic usually evens itself out or is removed entirely in order to bring the partnership into parity again. 

And as always in romance, the strength and stakes of the story are actually in the internal conflict, which is where the power struggle is, whether it’s in terms of wanting more communication or more vulnerability or deeper understanding of each other. The romance itself happens when the more powerful one in the relationship (whoever it is at a particular point in the story, because it’s almost always going to switch off throughout) is willing to surrender some of their power to the other(s) to balance it out.

Because we live in a patriarchal world, we already know that men inevitably have more power than women in this structure. In a hetero pairing, then, the man definitely has to realize (consciously or unconsciously) that the world is unfair to his partner and work to give over some of his power to her or even things out externally. (Obviously, it’s better if he can make it so that it’s better for all women, rather than just his, but sometimes he’s constrained by other power structures beyond him.)

So, as an author, your job is to make sure that your MCs are constantly jockeying for power in their relationship (this is basically conflict) and then bringing them together so that they’re sharing equal amounts of power in terms of their personal dynamic.

Honestly, every romance novel I can think of plays this theory out. Am I wrong? Am I too cynical? Do you agree? Disagree? 

Sex, Lies and Sensibility by Nikki Payne

Nora is not having a good year. She’s just discovered that she and her sister Yanne are her late father’s secret family, all they got left in the will was a barely habitable house in MAINE of all places, and oh yeah, her sex tape just went viral. With no options at home, she and Yanne head to Maine with hopes of fixing the place up and making it a viable inn before they run out of money.

Bear has a habit of taking on more responsibility than he can handle, and the weight of his Abenaki community rests on his shoulders. If his tourism business fails, the community fails too—and it’s not looking good for business right now, especially since the abandoned house they use as a home base is suddenly un-abandoned by a beautiful woman and her sister. But maybe if they work together, all of them can succeed—or maybe it’ll bring all of them down?

This is a modern retelling of Sense and Sensibility, and in Nikki’s capable hands, it’s fresh and funny and sexy. It’s out everywhere today!

(I’m not the editor on this one—just worked with Nikki on an early version of the story. But I’m always happy to hype her up!)

With This Witch by Isla Winter

Petra thought she’d have ages before she’d have to take over the role of Premier Witch, the leader of the witches in her small community where supernaturals and humans live together, but a family emergency means she’ll have to step up sooner. The Premier Witch, though, traditionally has to be married, and Petra thought she’d have ages for that as well. But if she can’t find a spouse in 30 days, the supernatural council will give the Premier Witch title to her family’s long-held enemy.

Her friend Lachlan, the demon representative on the council, who has secretly been pining for her for years, offers to fake-marry her for the good of the council (sure, babe). Petra, of course, thinks they’re just friends and doesn’t want to ruin anything, even though her new husband is hot and sweet and has HORNS, you guys.

Family, legacy, politics, small town, friends to lovers, witches and demons and vampires (and more), oh my! With This Witch is out today!

Call of the Sea by Emily B. Rose

Princess Kenna has one dream: adventure on the ocean to find out if mermaids are real. But her parents won’t let her anywhere near the water, AND for the good of her kingdom, she has to get married, dooming her to a boring life on land. To make matters worse, suitors from around her kingdom have been sent to the castle so she can choose one of them as her husband, but she has no desire to marry someone who only wants to be king.

There is one man, though, who seems like an attractive option, but he mysteriously disappears before she can choose him. She chases after him on a boat, and wouldn’t you know it, they end up getting shipwrecked on an island together. There, Kenna learns about herself and about a truth long hidden, and tries to figure out how she can do her duty to her people while also being true to her own desires.

Big Little Mermaid/Moana/Brave vibes and fat/demisexual/ADHD rep in this NA fantasy! It’s out today, and there is also a GORGEOUS exclusive hardcover edition from ERRA Books that you can preorder!

An Accidental Proposal by Melanie Rachel

This is a Pride and Prejudice variation in which Darcy doesn’t quite get the chance to put his foot in his mouth when proposing to Elizabeth for the first time (oops, spoiler for a 211-year-old book) because someone ELSE barges in and accidentally proposes (not to Elizabeth).

But as Darcy and Elizabeth sort out the implications of this other proposal between their friends, they get to know each other better, and both of them start to understand where they’ve gone wrong with each other in the past. But will they fall back into their old patterns before Darcy can propose properly this time?

Melanie always writes unique and banter-y Austen variations, and this one is no exception. An Accidental Proposal is out on Amazon and KU now!

What you need to make a great author website

If one of your plans this year was to make an author website (or get your current author website in shape), today’s newsletter is for you!

Why do you need an author website? You need a place that holds all the information that your readers would want to know. Social media sites are often used as replacements for author websites, but you don’t own your Facebook page or your TikTok handle, and if any of those platforms go under or get hacked, you can lose access to those sites and to your readers. And those platforms are designed for specific purposes (i.e. to be social) rather than to transmit information. One central place that you can direct readers to and that you own will make your life so much easier.

If your goal is just to get your site up and running, I’m going to cover the tech basics and the pages you’ll need for your site here, and keep it super simple so you can quickly get it online. Then I’ll get into ways that you can make the content really pop so that readers can get the most out of your site.

Tech basics

If this is the part that’s making you not want to even put a website together, fair. I get it. The term “tech basics” scares me too. So let’s break it down step by step.

First, you should get your own domain name, e.g. authorname.com. Make it super easy for people to find you on the internet, rather than having to type an unnecessarily long website address with dots and backslashes. And this will also get you your own email address with your domain name (e.g. author@authorname.com), rather than just a gmail address (not required, but looks a bit more professional). You do have to pay for a domain, but I think it’s a necessary cost of doing business as an author.

You do NOT need to hire someone to design you a whole custom website right now, especially if you’re just starting out. That’s expensive and fancy, and you can make a website on your own without spending much money. We’re going to keep everything super simple at the moment, and then you can build up to higher levels of fanciness later if you want to. So get a website builder like Squarespace, Wix, or WordPress (I use Squarespace), and they will walk you through the process of putting a site together.

If you want to get a logo and brand colours and fonts, go for it, but if this is not your thing (it is so not mine), just keep things black and white with a pop of colour, and choose a easy-to-read font for the bulk of the writing on the site. For your logo, you can choose another font just for your author name. We want to keep this readable and easy to use. If you want to use photos, use your own or choose royalty-free ones from sites like Unsplash or Canva.

What do you actually need to include on your author website?

A bio: Just a short paragraph about who you are, what you write, and maybe some fun little tidbits about your life. I also suggest including a picture, but totally understand if you’d rather be faceless (an illustration/cartoon also works). A bio helps readers relate to you, get to know you, and get on your side so that you can make a connection with them and not just be the writer behind the curtain.

Books: Tell readers about your work by including blurbs for all the books you have out (it can be the back cover blurb copy/pasted there, that’s fine). Most importantly, make sure you have buy links directly to the bookseller of their choice. Use universal links for Amazon so that you can easily send them to their own country’s Amazon. As a Canadian, I find it so frustrating  when only American Amazon links are included, and if I’m feeling lukewarm about the book, it may stop me from seeking it out on Canadian Amazon (yes, I am that lazy sometimes). Don’t give readers a chance to talk themselves out of buying the book! The blurb should sell them on it, and then you need to give them the clearest path to go buy it.

Contact info: Sure, this might open you up to awkward fan interactions or unwanted criticism or pressure (“when’s the next book coming out?!”), but it also gives grateful readers the opportunity to tell you how much they loved your book and what it means to them, which: worth it. Also include your social media links so that readers can follow you and stay up-to-date with what’s going on with your work.

Newsletter link: Make sure you include multiple places on your site where readers can sign up for your newsletter. I’ve talked at length before about why newsletters are SO important, and if starting or reviving your newsletter is one of your goals for this year, I would say that the newsletter is perhaps even more important than the website. It took me a year or two before I started a newsletter, and I still regret that I didn’t do it sooner.

You can add more pages to your website, but these ones above are the absolute musts. If you want to have a page about events you’re going to or press you’ve done, or if you have a blog, you can include them as well. (If you don’t want to blog, you don’t need to, promise.)

How to make your website work for you

Here are a few tricks to help your readers find what they need on your site and understand you better.

We want readers to connect with you on an emotional level, so inject some personality into your site. Have a tagline that explains what you and your books are about (check out other writers’ sites to see the little one-liners they use to give readers a sense of who they are). What kind of romance do you write? What themes do you explore in your work? What kind of experience do you provide for the reader? What kind of tone/voice do you use—are you funny, angsty, wry? This will help set readers’ expectations so they know what they’re getting from you.

If you’ve written a lot of books already, give your readers good entry points into your oeuvre. What’s the best place for them to start? If they love X trope, guide them to specific titles. What’s the ideal reading order for your books and/or series? If they’re on your site, they’re already interested in you, so get them invested in your work and reading it!

Going back to that newsletter: tell readers why they want to get on your list. Usually you include a free lead magnet with your newsletter—most often it’s a story of some sort, whether it’s full-length or a novella or a deleted scene, a prequel or sequel to one of your previous books, or a standalone, or it could also be something book-related but not a story, like colouring pages, a game, etc. Whatever it is, make sure you tell the reader why they want that lead magnet and/or why they want to get on your newsletter list. Does the magnet provide deeper insight into the story that they’ve already read and loved? If you can’t convince the reader why they NEED this lead magnet, then maybe it’s time for a new one. (Change them out frequently—at least once a year.)

Or maybe it’s your newsletter itself that's the draw, in which case you’ll want to highlight what’s special about it. Do you do giveaways and sneak peeks? Do you spill the tea about what’s going on in your world? Do you write fanfic about your own characters and what they’re doing? Again, convince them that it's the best thing for them if they get on your list.

Finally: keep your site updated! Make sure all your information is current, especially if you have a book that’s just released—it shouldn’t say “coming soon” on your site anymore.

I hope this has convinced you to get working on or updating your author website. It’s such a valuable resource that’s often neglected, and it can really help you drive sales if you’re using it well.