New title help required

Thanks to the comments on the previous title post I now have a new bunch of suggestions for that title.

New title poll

Two more reviews for New Lease of Life

A 3.5 star review from My Fiction Nook.

"I liked this book. I liked the story, and I liked the plot. The setting in England was well done, and the writing followed the setting, with Colby being a bit rougher around the edges than Phillip. I enjoyed the snark and sarcasm, and Phillip's dry humor.

Definitely worth checking out."

Full review here

And a 3 heart review from Love Bytes Reviews

"Once I warmed to Pip’s character this was a very enjoyable read. I recommend it to lovers of the MM romance genre, who like stories that focus more on angst and relationship development than sex."

Although she does say about the sex "Around the 87% we finally get some heat. And in the words of the characters, it was downright ‘filthy’."

Full review here.


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Title help

As I mentioned the other day I need some help with a title for a historical Pony Express story. I have several suggestions, and ran a similar poll on my Facebook author page, Lillian's Lovefest.

So my question to you is...

Which title would have you one clicking

A review for New Lease of Life

This one from Joyful Jay.

"What I liked best about this story was that it was a slow burn romance with a lot of angst, mainly in the form of miscommunication and misunderstandings. I also liked that the two characters didn’t immediately jump into a physical relationship. In fact, readers don’t begin to see any heat until almost the end of the book. Therefore, instead of sexy scenes, readers are treated to a an extended period of getting to know each other before things heat up…and heat up they do!"

"If you are a fan of a good hurt-comfort storyline, one with a lot of angst and short on sexy scenes, you are going to love this book."

3.75 stars

Read the rest of the review here.


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One, two, three

Yep, not one but three 4 star reviews from Inked Rainbow Reads.

"The two of them together – watching Pip come out of his shell and Colby learn to respect Pip, but do so in a way that also pushed his boundaries was great to read.

Both were given a new lease on life and it was a sweet, not a lot of drama story." - Avidreader

"Colby comes into his life like a rainbow after a storm." - Cookie.
LOL Love this description of Colby. So much the way I wrote him. (LF)

"I liked this couple together and was hoping for more of them.
 Maybe a part 2? I want Pip to meet Colby’s family. I want both their worlds to mesh and see how they handle it. It felt like book one was a set up for a book 2, or maybe that’s my wishful thinking." - Cookie

"I really liked the way this author wrote this characters and this story! You get some angst with this book but you also get so much sweet too!" - Kira

See the reviews in full here.

Interested? Click the banner to take you to Amazon. More buy links in the sidebar.

I think I'm doing things backwards

So, I've been coveting a gorgeous cover that Garrett Leigh made for the longest time. The Heart of a Cowboy. I wanted that cover so badly but I had no story for it. Then Garrett had a sale on her pre-made covers and yes, my cover (what, it was mine regardless that I didn't own it. It owned me!) was in that collection for sale. No! Someone would buy it for sure!
Yes, we know how this story goes. I bought the cover, story or not I couldn't stand the thought of another story coming out with my cover. racking my brains I remembered a long forgotten historical western that I'd written about a pony express rider and the ranch owner who loves him. It's old and rough and needs lots of work (did I even know about POV back then? Head hopping, like, woah!).

However as much as I love the title Garrett gave the cover I don't think it will suit this story. I'd like the focus to the title to be the Pony Express rider, but what if the story doesn't pan out and I'm left a book cover that I can't use.

The working title for the story is The Mail Must Go Through. This is the Pony Express motto. PE riders were called Messengers.

Can anyone help me with a title?

Friday Fiction

If been doing an alphabet challenge and I'm not quite finished yet (up to S for those who are interested). But I have broken away from that a couple of times. One of those times was because Lethe Press have a massive ebook sale on.

"What's that got to do with anything?"

I've had Death by Silver on my Kindle forever and not got around to reading it. Knowing I could pick up the sequel for $1.50, well, that pushed this book right up my TBR pile. And what a joy that read was.

Blurb

His practice newly established, metaphysician Ned Mathey can’t afford to turn away any clients. But the latest Londoner to seek Ned’s magical aid gives him pause: Mr Edgar Nevett, an arrogant banker, is the father of the bully who made Ned’s life hell at boarding school. Nevertheless, Ned accepts the commission to ensure the Nevett family silver bears no ancient or modern curses, and then prepares to banish the Nevett family to unpleasant memory again. Until Edgar Nevett is killed by an enchanted silver candlestick—one of the pieces Ned declared magically harmless.

Calling on his old school friend Julian Lynes—private detective and another victim of the younger Nevett—Ned races to solve the murder, clear the stain on his professional reputation, and lay to rest the ghosts of his past.

Assisted by Ned’s able secretary Miss Frost, who has unexpected metaphysical skills of her own, Ned and Julian explore London’s criminal underworld and sodomitical demimonde, uncover secrets and scandals, confront the unexpected murderer and the mysteries of their own relationship.

If you like KJ Charles and Jordan L Hawk, you'll love this book. The world building is strong and the characters are engaging even when they are being clueless and gruff. The sex is pretty much all off the page and in my opinion the romance could have been a touch more pronounced, and relied less on miscommunication, but that said I really couldn't fault the mystery or the setting.

The story swept me along and I was urging our heroes into each others arms. I hit buy on the sequel long before I finished the last page.

St Patrick's Day

In honour of St Patrick's Day I've had Barmbrack for breakfast (try saying that after a couple of pints of Guinness). It's a fruit bread, similar in flavour to a Hot Cross Bun.

A couple of things happening today. 

Yes, ARe are having a blast with 25% off selected titles. Lovers Entwined is one of the books you can get at a reduced price for today only.


And I'm participating over at Diverse Reader's Luck of the Irish giveaway.

From the promo. 
"Each author will be sharing something St. Patty's day related. We have recipes, art, poems, limericks, and of course giveaways! It's a lot of fun! Here are the authors for this terrific giveaway: Kenzie Cade, Avon Gale,Raissa Phoenix, LE Franks, Mickie Ashling, BenMonopoli, Kate McMurray, Lillian Francis, J.r. Gray,Sloan Parker, Kelly Jensen, Bronwyn Heeley, Lane Hayes, Chris McHart, Joe Cosentino, Felice Stevens, S.c. Wynne Helena Stone, N.r. Walker and Carroll S Poe!!!! So be sure to check out my blog on St. Patrick's Day and see if you truly have the Luck of the Irish!!!"

Okay. That's the announcements for today. I'll raise a pint of Guinness to St Paddy later tonight. 
To the Irish saint that apparently hailed from Wales.

What d’you mean, it’s March?

Sorry guys, I know I have been sorely lacking in keeping this blog up to date since the start of the year. March is probably too late to be expounding on my good intentions and New Year’s resolutions—although, too be fair I don’t do NY resolutions because I feel you are only setting yourself up to fail—especially as one of my good intentions was to blog more regularly. *has déjà vu moment from 2015/14/13*

An update post is probably a good idea though.

I’m ashamed to say that New Lease of Life arrived in this world on 25^th December with very little in the way of fanfare. I pushed it here and had a spot on the Dreamspinner blog a couple of days after release, but apart from that I did no blog tour or promo. In spite of that, New Lease of Life spent several weeks in the Dreamspinner Best Seller list and has garnered some favourable reviews. Some of which I still need to post here. Dreamspinner have a 25% off across the board sale until tomorrow so you could pick NLOL up at a reduced price until then.

RL has been somewhat hectic and of course the first thing to suffer is my writing in whatever form, but I am attempting to put pen to paper in some form at least a couple of times a week.

The sequel to Resonance (currently free at Are), tentatively titled ‘Resistance’, has been thoroughly betaed and I’ve just put the finishing touches to the third and, hopefully, final draft. It’s a sweet, low angst story looking at how Rick and Mal cope with life after their cutemeet. I'm currently looking for some pre-readers including some from Sussex. In the next few weeks I need to make a decision about whether to send it out to publishers, of which there are fewer by the day, or if I can justify the cost of self-publishing with my limited fanbase.

Next up in the pipeline is a story dealing with Smudge, another resident of Slopy Bottom. He plays quite a pivotal role in Resistance and demanded his own HEA. In fact there are a slew of characters in Slopy Bottom that want to tell you their stories so I may have to spend some time there. I have signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo in April and plan to use this focus to work on Smudge’s story. More on that later this month.

At some point this year I need to organise getting Lesson Learned re-released. Ellora’s Cave returned the rights to me in December and I intend to self-publish this novel with very little changes (apart from swapping back to the UK English it was written in). It’s been a long time since I’ve read this book and l’m looking forward to revisiting Drew and Nathan. I’ve been trawling the premade covers over at Meredith Russell and Garrett Leigh’s cover art sites in case anything strikes me as suitable but I’m yet to find anything. I should check out Lou Harper and some other cover artists, I suppose. Any suggestions? Failing that it looks like I’ll be subjecting one of my go-to cover artists to my own form of torture. Ask Meredith what I mean, she’ll be happy to enlighten you.

Also planned for this year: reworking of my WW2 submarine story, Under the Radar.  I’ve been working on this on and off for years. Maybe 2016 will be the year I finally get it finished and submitted.

And I’ve had several questions about writing a sequel to Theory Unproven. Hopefully I’ll be able to start something later this year. Although whether it will be set at the elephant reserve with Eric and Tyaan—Andrew really needs his story told—or back in England with Benedict and his (unrequited?) love for his boss, or maybe even in some other part of the world where animals are in danger, I couldn’t rightly say just yet.

Are there any stories that you want to see from me?

Fiction Friday - All About Amber

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