Release Date and Cover Reveal

Houston, We Have A Release Date

A few months ago, The Wildrose Press (TWRP) offered up a contract for Enemy Within, Enemy Games, and for the three, as yet untitled books that will finish out this series. The series has a name now: Chronicles of the Empire and the books will be numbered so it will be easier to know where you are in the arc of the story. 

This is the cover for book one, Enemy Within. The books will be ebook releases with a print on demand option. 

Here's the back cover:

Horrific torture in an alien prison torpedoed Captain Ari Idylle's military career. Stripped of command and banished to her father's scientific expedition to finish a PhD she doesn't want, Ari refuses to fly a desk. She intends to have her command back by any means possible, until pirates commandeer her father's ship, and she's once again a prisoner. Perhaps this cunning captor isn't what he pretends to be. 

As far as Cullin Seaghdh is concerned, the same goes for Ari. Her past association with aliens puts her dead center in Cullin's cross-hairs. If she hasn't been brainwashed and returned as a spy, then she must be part of a traitorous alliance endangering billions of lives. He can't afford the desire she fires within him. His mission comes first. He'll stop at nothing to uncover her true purpose and protect what is his, even if it means her destruction.

The release date for Enemy Within is July 17, 2019. 

A Picture Worth a Thousand Words

This is Karin (say CAR - in) rocking the book tee from Enemy Within and mimicking the front cover pose. If a picture is worth a thousand words, Karin completely makes my word count quota for the day.

How to Up Your Contest Scores in Three (not so) Easy Steps

This blog post is the result of a conversation Jeffe Kennedy and I had while she was in the midst of contest judging. As we compared notes, we realized we were seeing the same issues time and time again. So here's *my* version of How to Up Your Contest Scores in Three (not so) Easy Steps!

1. Cut to the chase - All of that lovely set up you've done showing us how your heroine's life sucks, yet what a wonderful gal she is? Yeah. Cut it. All of it. Drop us directly into the moment of crisis - the moment when everything goes to hell in a handbasket. Here's where my advice will differ from Jeffe's because I'm very much into the whole action/adventure thing. Your opening line should be the moment that your character's life is changed forever - he or she doesn't have to realize that's what's happening - but your reader should. Line one of my first book, Enemy Within: "Sun glinting off the barrel of a gun stopped Captain Ari Idylle dead in her tracks."

The first line from Jeffe's novella, Feeding the Vampire: "“I’ll do it,” I said."

Neither of those openings gives you a whole bunch of information, but both openings tell you that each heroine is about to have a day unlike any that's come before - even if neither of us tell you a single thing about the days that came before. Some of our other works give you a sentence or two of normal life before everything comes crashing down, but if you hear yourself saying "But you need to know this in order to understand..." No. Really. We don't. You need to know that in order to motivate your characters so they can stay true to themselves even while circumstances force them to change. Your readers only need tidbits of backstory sprinkled into the text AFTER the inciting incident (the alien abduction, the zombie attact, the hot guy in the beat up car dented her new BMW, whatever).

If you're receiving feedback like: Backstory dump, or Story starts in wrong place - this is where you want to start. Dump us straight into the action of your story along with your character and we won't be able to help but get yanked in along with him or her.

2. Internal conflict, external conflict. Know the difference and understand that romance requires only internal conflict. External conflict is icing. If you are writing a romance novel, your characters must be a danger to one another on an emotional level - this is internal conflict. It can be as simple as he's a cop and she saw the hell her mother went through every day because she loved a man whose work put him in the line of fire - then he died in the line of duty and the heroine swore she'd never do that to herself. In order for that romance to work, he has to convince her to accept risk and love and potential loss as a part of life. That's internal conflict. The drug war involving local street gangs is external conflict. In a romance novel, external conflict should, ideally, heighten the internal conflict in some way (either forces the hero or heroine to accept the need to change, shows up the vast differences in belief structures, etc) I like knowing why my hero and heroine are a danger to one another. So I ask that specifically when I'm first planning out a story. How is this guy a risk to her? How is she a risk to him? In one of my stories that's still in the planning stages, the hero has to drain the heroine's lifeforce in order to gain his freedom. He's a risk to her not just because he has to kill her, but because he has access to her every memory and there are some memories she's not willing to live with. She's a risk to him because she has the skill and knowledge to destroy him. They each have the other's lives in their hands. Did I mention they're sharing a body? Yes. This *is* intended to be a romance. So how are they going to work all of that out? There. You now understand internal conflict. So many obstacles, yet somehow, these two have to unbend enough to work together and maybe even fall in love. The external conflict - a bad guy kidnapping and hurting kids - works to force these two characters to face their fears, resentments, and prejudices. It is the external conflict that, finally, forces them to either break down the walls between them or they both die.

So. To be clear. Romance requires ONLY internal conflict. Without internal conflict, you don't actually have a romance story. This is fine, if you aren't writing romance. But if you want to sell a story as a romance, you can't pretend a few sex scenes between waves of rabid zombies attacking equals a romance. It doesn't. Your hero and heroine have to have a reason they cannot possibly love one another. Then they have to proceed to get past that (or not - if you like tragedies). Use your external conflict to force them to get past their 'you are the last person on earth' protests.

As a note: I'd once been told that in a romance, you should resolve your external conflict (kill the bad guy) first, and resolve the romantic conflict last. I've since seen some authors changing that up a bit. So take that bit of advice with a block of salt. If you're seeing feedback about 'where's the romance' or 'all external, no internal conflict', start here.

3. Put it in dialog. As much as possible, get out of a character's head and get him or her talking. If they think it, why can't they say it? If a hero says what he's thinking about heroine, you give your heroine a chance to respond verbally. That interchange will tell your readers far more about those two people than entire paragraphs of what they're thinking. Instead of Sam looking at Rene and thinking, "Whoa, she's cute!" Let him eye her, sidle up next to her, wondering what it was she was carrying over her shoulder and say, "What's a gorgeous gal like you doing in a post-apocalyptic dump like this?" Rene awards Sam a hard stare and drops the limp body of a dead man at his feet. Sam blinks down at the dead guy's wide open eyes. "Ditching the body of the last smart ass who tried to sweet talk me," Rene retorted.

Because humans are social animals, we're infinitely more fascinated by two people talking than we are by anyone thinking. Get the thoughts into dialog *especially* if they're remotely embarrassing or compromising! That's where the fun is. Let your characters out to play. You can always pull them back later.

If you're seeing feedback about 'too much exposition' or 'why are they thinking all this' start here.

Not Winning a RITA

So for those of you who missed the main event, my first book, Enemy Within was a finalist in the Romance Writers of America RITA contest. This contest is billed as the Oscars of the romance industry. It was a huge deal (to me) to final in two different categories: Best First Book and Paranormal. I'll say right away the book didn't win in either category.

And that was surprisingly okay with me. I think my friends and family were more disappointed than I was. My friend and RWA11 roommate Jeffe Kennedy had taken on the task of texting my husband the play by play. After the fact, she showed me the profanity (on his part) laced reactions. My biggest regret of the evening was that I had a huge, long list of people to thank. I only regretted not getting to say thank you in that public venue.

I'd been strangely ambivalent about the possibility of winning a RITA in the first place. Isn't that odd? When my agent, Emmanuelle Morgen, asked why, I'd said something about there being no where else to go. She assured me there were all sorts of pinnacles to strive for after a RITA - the NYT list, foreign rights, movie deals, hard back...I think I may have asked whether winning a RITA would ensure another book contract. We won't go into the response on that one. I may have acquired a new bruise.

Kidding. I guess my trepidation about possibly winning a RITA with a first book stemmed from the fact that I feel like I'm still learning about writing. I haven't mastered it in any way, shape, or form. (Some days, the whole writing thing stomps all over me - so there's a ways to go for mastery.) Is it stupid to say that while Enemy Within is a romance novel, the romance wasn't really the point of the story? And the RITAs really are about the best romance has to offer. So, no. I wasn't disappointed.

But I also won't stop entering the contest.

Second Book Sighting

Enemy Games is out in stores on May 3rd. One of the perks of having written the book is that I get a box of books a week or so before the actual release date. This is so I can read through the book before it releases and obsess over all of the typos, repeated words and other assorted mistakes we either failed to catch or that otherwise slipped through the cracks in the final editting phases. Yes. That sound you hear is me, pounding my head against the desk. The errors so far are relatively minor, but I am SO annoyed I missed them. I guess it's true. You can only read through a manuscript so many times before you simply stop seeing what's actually on the page. Arg.

On another note, though, I love this cover. I'd spent some time on the internet surfing for images of abandoned, run down industrial-looking sites. There are some amazing photographs of that sort of thing out there in the world. I forwarded a few to Berkley's art department. They were photos that I thought captured the feel, if not the exact impression, of the space station in the story. The cover artist really did a nice job of capturing that run-down, held together with bailing twine and a prayer look I'd wanted to convey - even if there really aren't windows in space.

I picked up the box of books from the post office, opened it, admired the book, then ran for the car. It wasn't until much later that evening that DH and I really took a good look. Did you catch it? The print beneath my name on the front cover? I hadn't. When I did, I had to do a double take. Here it is, blown up.

Yes. That says 'National Bestselling Author of Enemy Within'. I stared at it for a full minute, at least, because this was news to me. The first book had hit a list? When? Where? Still uncertain, I emailed my agent. She called the editor and then rang me. Apparently, at some point unknown to me, Enemy Within DID hit a best seller list with one of the national bookstore chains. (We're trying to find out which one - more for curiosity's sake than anything else.) It's funny. It feels a little like cheating, when most of us think of the New York Times list or the USA Today list, but since neither of those lists is an actual report of books selling the most copies, maybe the bookstore list, which is a direct reflection of sales, is equally valid. Either way. I'm tickled. And heck. Maybe it's a start?

All Grown Up

Here it is. Enemy Within is on bookstore shelves...at least it is until my dear and amazing friends find it. I've had a report from Erin that a downtown Seattle bookstore had seven copies of the book yesterday. They were down to one copy today. Louie, on the East Coast, went to three different bookstores before he found a copy. In one of the stores, he may have made a few forceful and colorful suggestions about the store getting the book into stock when they told him they had no intention of ordering any. Feedback so far has been kind. One of my Feline-L friends tried to put the book down at chapter seven last night so she could go to bed. She sent another email at midnight her time saying she was on chapter twelve.  Sure, the book has had a few so-so reviews. Goes with the territory. No one author can be all things to all people. What it does mean, however, is that Enemy Within is now legal - all grown up, and out there in the world. And yes. That's me holding said book and looking...glassy-eyed. I won't lie. This has been so much fun. But I am very tired. I'd like to climb back into geeky writer role and do nothing but pile up page count for a few days. And maybe vacuum up the crunchy fallen leaves one of the cats insists on dragging into the house for her amusement.

One final bit of amazing news. Enemy Within was nominated for best futuristic romance in the Romantic Times Book Reviews 2010 Awards. Here's the list of nominees: CLOSE CONTACT by Katherine Allred, ENEMY WITHIN by Marcella Burnard, MIDNIGHT CRYSTAL by Jayne Castle, REBELS AND LOVERS by Linnea Sinclair, BEYOND THE NIGHT by Joss Ware.  Some of my favorite authors are in this list and it's an incredible, geeky thrill to be nominated alongside them. Congratulations to each of the nominees.

Release Day!

Marty

 It's here! These are the first photos of people with the Real Live book! Marty stayed up until midnight her time in order to download a copy from the Apple Book Store. Her's was the first shot I received. Next in was a shot from Karin.



Karin



Diana was next . Point for getting Kismet in the shot.  Then Lizz provided the first photo of the paperback version of the book. That's Winston posing so graciously beside the book.  I'm collecting photos of the book 'in the wild' and posting them to my Launch Party Facebook event. Many of them will also end up here. One Friday, I'll pool all the names of the people who've sent photos and do a drawing for a tee shirt with the book cover on it (give me your name and location - just state or country is fine, email, too, if you'd like to be entered in the tee shirt drawing)



Diana and Kismet







Winston