Overwhelming Newness

I’m at the place where I have so much new info going on with my books right now, it’s hard to keep up. I also realized today that I haven’t blogged for a bit. Sorry in advance for the length of this post, but I need to properly catch ya’ll up. Needless to say, I’ve been busy.

First things first. Let’s talk about how much the cover for Head Over Heels in Hawaii has been the bane of my existence.

I wanted that series animated. Then, I couldn’t get the font right to save my fucking life. I had a cover designer give me a traditional romance cover. Well, it just didn’t scream “romantic comedy,” so I had them change it AGAIN.

Final version…at least until I decide I don’t like it. Amazon is currently processing it, but it is backed up, so it may not show for a couple of days.

The designer also handled my Loved in Las Vegas cover. Get ready for Regi July 30. I think you will all love her in all of her “21-year-old set loose in Vegas” glory.

In short, all of my Calvert Sisters are getting new covers. Christmas on the Cruise ship and Wine on Waiheke will get new covers closer to publication.

Amp is done! I have some freshening up on it and will get ARCs out to my ARC team next weekend. It drops June 9th. I really cut it close on this one for two reasons. #1- Linus didn’t want to tell me his story. That’s the first time this has ever happened to me. He’s a bastard. Full stop. #2- I kept adding chapters to this thing. I’d tell my husband, “I’m almost done.” Then, I’d be like, “Yeah, I need another fight scene.” #3- Part of me may have not wanted to REALLY finish Jensen City Heroes. It may have been Freudian.

Speaking of Jensen City, did I happen to mention that Arson is now forever free on all major retailers?

Side note: To the random person on Scribd that gave it 5 stars…

This is especially true because I have no idea what Scribd is. It kind of just shows up in my Smashwords dashboard.

Moving on.

Let’s talk about this book, shall we?

I think I knew I was in trouble when I released this on Kindle Vella last July and it got several favorite “crowns” in the first week. It was my first thing I ever published, and it scared the literal shit out of me that people liked this so much. I had no idea what to do with people paying actual money to read my work.

Queue imposter syndrome music.

I unpublished this a few months ago because I really regret not writing it under my secret erotica pen name. I mean, it’s sheer filth, and even though Tori Ross isn’t my legal name, people I know in day-to-day life know that’s me because I publish romance. In romance, you need to have a social media presence that involves face, talk to people, and I go to conventions/signings. (More on that in a minute.) I was a new author and didn’t understand pen names in KDP. I was getting ready to publish Arson and thought it would be a good way to get my name out there.

So, I took this down and said to myself, “I’ll hide this on Inkitt, rebrand it as The Swingyards and move on with my life.”

I had over 25k (that’s thousand) reads on this fucking thing on Inkitt in a couple of months. So much for hiding it. If it was doing well on a free site, I said, “Fuck it. I’ll move it to Radish where I can actually make some cheese if serial readers like it so much.”

It’s been on Radish for a little over a week, and I’ve already earned money on this filth.

THEN, I go to Nashville last weekend for a signing. It was my first signing ever, but it was small. People still aren’t back in the convention mode after COVID, and the crowd was minimal. Some authors didn’t sell a single book.

Know what I sold? I sold one copy of Head Over Heels in Hawaii and, you guessed it, several copies of this thing.

At this point, I’m leaning into it. I pushed it back through Amazon the other day. It sold something immediately. Why this does so well when I practically have to offer handjobs for people to read my other stuff, I’ll never know.

So, it’s live on Amazon again. I have paper copies left if someone wants a signed copy. Send me a DM. Part 2, The Substitute, is also live and in paperback. I will push the series further wide as soon as I have time to put the file in Smashwords format. Once it’s loaded there, it will be available on all major retailers and Eden Books, and I’ll just let it ride.

What am I working on?

I’m nailing down Loved in Las Vegas over the next month and am balls deep into the sequel to Cherry Burn that centers around Piper. It’s about halfway done. This will drop June 30 on Kindle and KU. Ebook only due to the fact that this is only about 13k words. I’m damn near teary-eyed that I already have preorders for it. It’s 99 cents on Kindle and will be on KU.

I think I’m finally spent on what’s happening. Lots of writing here. Lots of cover creation and shuffling my catalog around now that I understand more about this author stuff. Hopefully, that will settle after I get The Caretaker and The Substitute wide.

Hit me up if you’d like print copies (signed) of any of my work. I have leftovers from Nashville. I will charge $4 for shipping on top of the Amazon print cost. But I’ll also throw in one of my super snazzy bookmarks.

Now, for photobombs of my author event in Nashville. Big shout out to authors Annette Miller, Melanie Jayne, Ester Lopez, Aliza Mann, Rochelle Bradley, CJ Warrant, Pam Ackerson, Becca Jameson and Elle James. I went by myself, but I never ate a meal alone.

And just look at that cheesecake.