Jordan Summers

Tonight I set GOTHIC PASSIONS free. It should be up everywhere in a few days. I’m very fortunate to have gotten a kick-ass cover. Feast your eyes on the gorgeousness. Here is a quick blurb:

Vampire Richard Sebastian Stuart, the sixth Earl of Lyon has supped from the finest necks in England, but when he encounters an innocent maiden named Lily, desire turns to lust, lust to passion, passion to obsession. He will do anything to possess her, even strike a deal with the devil himself. One taste will never quell his aching hunger for the one and only woman, strong enough to tame the insatiable beast within and become his eternal mate.

Lady Lily Devlin has no intention of being anyone’s possession. She saw how that kind of love destroyed her mother. Lily hasn’t met a man that she couldn’t thwart. She’s determined that Lord Lyon will be no exception, but she didn’t count on his single-mindedness or his…insatiable appetites.

My edits on Atlantean’s Quest: The Arrival continue. They are going FAR better than I had anticipated. I am adding more than I thought, not changing, ADDING. Right now the book is just shy of 55K and I still have half to go. :-O It will be a beast by the time I’m finished. I have to admit that I am having fun putting these books up. (Well, when I’m not stressing through the process.) It’s great to finally have a little control. (wg)

No, I’m not talking about my books. I’m still working on that. I am talking about the new books by Sylvia Day and Kaz (Karen) Mahoney. It has been a while since Sylvia has released a historical romance. If you’ve read any of her previous historicals, you know that they tend to have atypical stories/characters and a lot of steam. Pride and Pleasure is no exception.

THE IRON WITCH is Karen Mahoney’s first book, a young adult urban fantasy. The story revolves around Donna Underwood, a young woman who loses her parents and has her life turned upside down due to the nature of the loss. I’ve read other work by Karen. She writes entertaining stories that are strongly character driven.

You cannot go wrong with either author. In fact, why choose when you can buy both.

Ellen Fisher wrote a blog about how she was able to pay her mortgage with her ebook sales for the last couple of months. Very cool!

I’m not sure what I’d do if I could pay our mortgage with my ebook sales. (And yes, I realize it’ll take a lot more books to come close to doing that, but a girl can dream.:) Today, I did a little bit of everything. I worked on formatting Gothic Passions. Hopefully I got it right. If I did, then within the next few days I’m going to put it in the queue to publish. Rose’s Rapture (the follow up to Gothic Passions) will be released in four weeks. I’m shooting for a four/five week release schedule since I have a lot of books to re-release. We’ll see if it works like planned. *ggg I also did exciting things like workout and laundry. I know you’re jealous. To make sure you stay pea green, you should know that I also vacuumed. You heard me. I vacuumed. Top that. (Crosses arms and nods.)

Hey Guys,

Here is the link to Paris After Dark. The price isn’t up yet, but hopefully that will change soon.

On a separate note, has anyone seen the Green Hornet? I’m trying to figure out if it’s worth seeing. I’d love a few reviews.

It has taken two days, but Paris After Dark (my story from the Mammoth Book of Vampire Romances 2) is finally up everywhere (or will be in a few hours/days). I’ve decided to start with the .99 cent price point. Hopefully that will tempt a few readers my way. We’ll see. It’s truly an experiment at this point. Much thanks goes out to Sylvia Day for spending nine or ten hours on the phone with me for the past two days. I honestly could not have done it without her. She deserves a medal for her patience. Seriously. She assures me it will get easier the more I do. I sure hope so. My head was hurting by the time we finished today and I’m sure hers was, too. She’s going to hold my hand through one more (Gothic Passions), then the training wheels will come off and I’ll have to steer on my own. I have no doubt there will be some crashes along the way. LOL! Yes, I am thinking of what I should get her to say thanks. I have a few ideas.

So without further ado, please welcome my first indie book.

Here is the cover a little larger.

As you can see from my sidebar, I’m beginning to get the new covers up for my previously published books. I’m filling out stat sheets to have more covers made. Today, Sylvia will be walking me through the process of how to upload my work. I have two books ready to go and another one on the way. If some reason I don’t get how to do this whole process (always a possibility, since I’m a slow learner), then I have a lovely lady willing to do it for me. I just thought I should give it a shot first. I never thought of myself as an Indie publisher. I’ve worked hard to get the book deals that I’ve landed. I’d always figured that I would continue to pursue N.Y. publishing, but now I’m not so sure. I am enjoying the short story market. I hope I continue to sell my work there. But I’ve been thinking a lot about what Stephen King said about when an author should approach an agent. Please forgive the paraphrase. He said, “An author shouldn’t worry about getting an agent until they are making a lot of sales. Until you are, the author isn’t worth the agent’s time.” Right now, I’m curious if that’s the case. I am hearing a lot of stories from friends and acquaintances about agents dropping people because they aren’t ‘bestseller enough’. WTF?

I’m entering the Indie market with several previously published books. They will be re-edited, but I have no idea how well they will do. The whole experiment might be a bust. I don’t think so, but you never know. I will be curious to see how it progresses. I have three original pieces that I will probably add to my re-releases. One will be coming out for sure, since it ties into one of the books I’m releasing. My plan is to keep you updated on my progress. The ups and downs of self-publishing my backlist and the lessons I learn along the way.

I was getting my hair done the other day and overheard the woman next to me talking about her dog. It was a rescue animal. Apparently, someone thought that putting a litter of puppies in a sealed plastic bag and dumping them in the trash was an okay thing to do. Most of them died. Three survived. Her dog was one of the three. As I listened horrified, I realized something: How someone treats animals truly reflects what kind of person they are on the inside.

And I personally don’t want to be anywhere near that rotting flesh. Sometimes people really piss me off.

The short story is finished and well on its way through edits. I hope to have it sent off by Monday. (Fingers and toes crossed it’s accepted.) I’ve also started editing my ebooks to get them ready to release on Kindle and Nook. I plan to take all next week to work through all the manuscripts to make sure there are no glaring issues. I know this sounds easy, but I’m one of those writers who HATES to read my work once the edits are done and the book has been published. Just thinking about it makes me green around the gills. I ‘finished’ (okay, I’ll probably go through the excerpts one more time) Gothic Passions tonight. I added excerpts from Rose’s Rapture (the follow up to GP) and Paris after Dark in the back. They aren’t all the same time period, but they are all vampire stories. I’ve decided to trim back some of the language in the books. I know I wrote Gothic Passions and Rose’s Rapture a LONG time ago when I was publishing erotic romance regularly, but there was certain language in those books that I never liked (ie I was told it had to be in there.). I figure now is my chance to change things. Once I finish editing Rose’s Rapture, Tears of Amun, Atlantean’s Quest 1,2,3,4, and Atlantean Heat, I’m going to dive into my next book. Right now, I’m leaning toward the dark urban fantasy romance, but my dystopian YA started talking to me today so who knows what I’ll write next. It may very well be multiple projects at once. Yay me. *ggg

Which brings me to my next dilemma. At the end of last year, I put together a list of agents to query. I divided the list into tiers, but given what’s been happening in the industry I’m not sure if I should bother querying. Borders is teetering on the bring of bankruptcy. If that happens, the publishing houses will have another shake up. I guess I’m trying to decide whether I should wait until after the next shake up or plow ahead. Right now, I don’t have a story ready to query with. I need to edit my YA before it can be sent out and it’s going to take me a few months to finish the whole urban fantasy romance (or whatever I write next). I’ve started the manuscript, but from what I’ve been hearing agents no longer want to see a partial. Thoughts? Ideas? Tips? I’m open to all comments.

It’s been pretty quiet around here. I’m still hard at work on the short story. I wrote at the coffee shop yesterday. Got a decent word count, but the story didn’t seem to be coming together. Today, I decided to lift some weights, vacuum, do laundry, and think about what was wrong. Once I’d finished those tasks, an idea came to me. I know it’ll need quite a bit of editing, but it seems to be on the right track now. I’m less than a thousand words from hitting my goal amount. Should finish tomorrow. Could’ve finished today, but dinner isn’t going to fix itself. *ggg  I just hope that in the end the story is as funny as sections of it seems to be to me. (Say that five times fast.)

Been reading Mercy Blade by Faith Hunter and Undertow by Cherry Adair. Really enjoying them both. It’s been a long time since I’ve sat down to read a straight contemporary. I’m embarrassed to admit that I am not normally a fan of that genre, so I buy very few books. (Yes, I know I’ve written it. No comments from the peanut gallery.)  Cherry Adair falls into the category of one of those few. I really enjoy how she tells a story. No matter how ‘out there’ the elements get, the characters still come off as believable. I’m not a particularly visual person. Just ask dh. (wg) It’s why I have so much trouble writing description. But for some reason, I can ‘see’ everything Cherry describes. It makes reading her work a joy. Mercy Blade is the third book in the Jane Yellowrock series. I wasn’t sure what I thought about this series when I read the first book, but I decided I liked it enough to give the second book a try. Book two drew me in and now I’m hooked on the series. I like how the character development is unfolding and how the characters around the heroine are changing. It makes for a very fun and exciting read. It makes me wonder where the author is taking us. Can’t wait to find out.

In another week, Karen Moning will release her final Fever book and I can finally read the two I have sitting on my shelf. I’ve been patiently  waiting for the last book to come out so that I won’t be stuck with a bunch of cliffhangers. I did buy each book as it was released, but I stopped reading them after book number two because I heard book three and four had MAJOR cliffhanger endings. I’m pretty excited that I finally get to dig in. I won’t do that though until I finish Mercy Blade and Undertow. Are you reading anything you’re excited about? Any recommendations? (Not that I need any with my giant digital TBR pile, but you know I’m always up for a good read. )

Like most people, I’ve been looking back on 2010. It was definitely a year of ups and downs both personally and professionally. In January, I parted ways with my agent. It’s only now that I’m thinking about querying again. I had to get over my disappointment first. Had a few health hiccups, but made it through with flying colors (Thank goodness.). Didn’t manage to get near as much writing in as I would’ve liked. That absolutely MUST change this year. More so now that manuscripts no longer have to be filed in a drawer if they don’t sell. It’s weird (but nice) to have a backup. On the upside, I did manage to get out of the heat last year and spend a decent amount of time in Europe and the UK. It’s now my mission to figure out how to do that every year. I’m serious. I hate summer in the desert. It SUCKS! In 2010, I read 55 books give or take. (I feel like I’m missing a few, but I can’t figure out the titles.) I’d hoped to top my previous year’s reading list, but I didn’t make it. This year I’d LOVE to reach 70 titles. We’re also slowly fixing up the house, while at the same time paring down. We just have way too much crap. We’ve donated a ton of stuff to the local library and over a truck load to the Salvation Army. They’ll both be receiving more from us this year. All and all 2010 was a good year for us. I know how fortunate that makes us because it was a rough one. That’s why I’ve decided to hit the ebooks hard this year. It’s imperative to have multiple streams of income these days. I want to get all ten of my ebooks up within the first six months of this year–this includes one new project. I may even add another title that’s finished. I’m still debating that one since it’s a single title manuscript. Now that the YA is off my plate for a little while, I’m going to work on multiple projects. I need to have a bit of a build up before I send out those first queries. Of course, this is all after I finish my Blood Lite 3 story.

I don’t tend to make New Year’s resolutions. I’m not particularly good at goal-setting. I am however working on the latter. I do think it’s important to set goals. They keep you on track and moving forward. My goals this year won’t just include writing projects. I also have language learning goals–bring on the Rosetta Stone German and Pimsler. And I have behavior changing goals. I’m calling it that because frankly I think the word ‘diet’ sets people up to fail. It sounds like it has a specific beginning and ending date, when in fact what you’re trying to do is change your behavior. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law recently lost quite a bit of weight (50/60lbs for him and 20 something for her). (She didn’t need to lose a lot.) We asked them what they did. I expected to hear that they did something extreme in the eating department and worked out like fiends. Well they have been working out and have cut back on eating out, but apparently the biggest thing they did was switch to eating on salad plates. You know those little plates that come with a set that are for salads? Yeah, those are the ones. They didn’t change what they were cooking. They kept everything else the same. They simply moved to a smaller plate. I’m talking portion control here people. Dh and I have decided to try it. What have we got to lose? (pun intended)

I’ve mentioned my reading goals and the fact that I want to lose weight (no, I’m not going to tell you how much it’s too depressing), so I suppose I need to give at least an indication of my writing goals. Like I said above, I’m still trying to figure out the whole goal thing. If I had to pin down specific goals it would be to finish my UF Romance, write a Middle Grade book that’s been tugging at me, and write a novel with my ghoul character from Tastes Like Chicken (Blood Lite 2). If I get those things written, then I intend to finish a Phantom Warrior story that I started a long time ago. I figure that’s pretty good for the year, two single titles, a 30K middle grade book, and a long novella. If I manage that or better, I’ll be a VERY happy writer indeed.

How about you all? Any goals, reading or otherwise?

Happy New Year everyone!!! May this year lessen your troubles, improve your health, and add to your happiness.