L.V. Lewis's Blog, page 24

I was in bed when I remembered I had a challenge post to fulfill for today. I am chilled by the depth of insanity that consumes me to make doing a daily post on my blog this important. Seriously? Could this not have waited until tomorrow? I think not. There are other posts that will fill the rest of my week, but when I look back on this month of prolific writing I could not look back at August 6, 2013 and not have a post to show for it. Now that would have been a travesty of epic proportions.

Now that I have your attention, and my brain is still addled from being half asleep, what do I really have to share? I know exactly what it is. In my excitement of having an audiobook produced and recorded, I had not thought about the need to market and promote said audiobook. In conversations I’ve had with authors throughout the groups I belong, most of them are just as clueless as I am about how to market them.

The logical advise would be to do exactly what I’ve done to market and promote my e-books and paperbacks, but it doesn’t seem like one solution will fit all in my humble opinion. So my next challenge as it were, has become researching until I find out exactly how to market and promote my audiobook, and you can bet I will share what I find with my colleagues, and maybe with the whole of the writerly world.

~*~

As I’m sure you are all aware by now Exit Strategy, the follow-up to Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever is several months late. I have decided to address this issue head on with a blog post because I really don’t want my readers who have stuck with me through all my issues to give up on Exit Strategy.

Before I explain what’s going on with me, I just want to say first and foremost, I write because I love it. Before Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever I wrote other things under other names, but never a novel. Unfortunately, fiction writing is not my career. I have a demanding full-time job, a full-time family life, a weekly young women’s mentorship program I co-manage with another woman, and my writing.

I list writing last, not because it is the least important of all these other things I do, but because in my world, it is extremely important (it’s most likely a close second to my family). It’s so important, I have sacrificed things I once loved to do it, such as watching television, sewing, crocheting, singing in a choir, going to movies, etc. The only other thing I haven’t given up is reading, because it’s important to being a good writer. And thank God for my Tivo, otherwise, I wouldn’t get to see any shows I like.

There has been a series of unfortunate events that have occurred since my foolhardy first anticipated release date for Exit Strategy. I won’t go into them again here because they’re documented all over my blog, Facebook, and other social media. Suffice to say, as a newbie novel writer, I flubbed the release date big time. I take full ownership of that. Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever was written during my downtime at work in 2012. When I set the release date for Exit Strategy, I failed to take into consideration that from January to June of 2013, I would be inundated with work. Even so, I managed to write sixteen chapters of what I planned to be twenty plus chapters. Then I had an accident, and it has gone downhill from there. I’m won’t recount all the other things that have happened because I know it’ll only sound like an excuse.

My Plan: In mid–July (when I knew I could get back to finishing Exit Strategy) sit down at my computer each and every day and pound out the last third of this novel. I anticipate writing non-stop for several weeks and getting it done. End of story.

What Really Happened: Most days I sat there, staring at a blank screen with only the words Chapter 17 glaring back at me.

Yes, I have a grand case of writer’s block. I alluded to this several times, the last of which was my blog post on “Ruminations about Book Promotion.” However, I’ve decided now is the time to call a spade a spade. Like any writer worth their salt, I am trying the various remedies writers way more prolific than me have used to overcome writer’s block and recorded in the annals of writerdom. I am writing every day (maybe not Exit Strategy, but writing nonetheless), and varying my projects to see if I’m just blocked on that one story or if all creative writing is affected. While I can write a bit on other stuff, my anxiety won’t allow me to do so for long.

So, it is time to come out and let my readers know, because I don’t want you all to hate me. Every once in a while, I get an email, a post, or something from a reader that makes me feel bad, because believe it or not, I’m not withholding Exit Strategy on purpose. I would benefit more than anyone if I could get it out tomorrow. However, I’ve chosen to wait to provide you the quality you deserve, not a quick fix.

In the past few months, I’ve sometimes felt like a shady politician trying to figure out various ways to spin things so I wouldn’t have to come out and just say, “I’ve got nothing.” (Where is Olivia Pope when a sister needs her?) I’ve let my readers down, and it hurts—in the words of Keisha Beale—“like a mofo.” Please know that this was never my intention. I want to go on record and apologize and to let you know that as soon as my creative juices are flowing again and my muse isn’t punishing me for some unknown offense, I will finish Exit Strategy. Then I will notify you of a solid release date, and all will be right in the world again.

Sneak Peek Sunday with Kahlen Aymes!
There are a lot of exciting things happening for The Remembrance Trilogy! 

The narrators are recording AUDIO BOOKS for Audible and iTunes.  I’m so excited!  It sounds fantastic and I can’t wait for you to hear it.

HERE IS A SAMPLE!

Copyright – 2012-2013 – Kahlen Aymes

Also, Ryan and Julia are going to FRANCE! The Future of Our Past will publish there in October of 2013!

What’s NEXT? … Alexander Avery and Angeline Hemming are my next super sexy, smokin’ hot power couple!  They’re headed your way in my  next series:  After Dark!!   These two are HOT, HOT, HOT type A personalities who’s battle of wills in and out of bed will melt hearts and panties.  :-)

As always… I love and adore you!  Let me know what you think of Ryan’s sexy voice!

xxox

~Kahlen

I don’t pretend to be a professional when it comes to marketing and promotion of books. I just got into this game last year, so I’m probably the least likely person to attempt to broach this subject with folks that have been doing this way longer than I have. However, as a I debuted some of what I’m calling passive advertising for my books earlier today (check out the samples in this post), I began to ruminate about some kernels of wisdom I could share with other writers about book promotion. Mind you, none of this is scientifically proven, nor have I conducted any studies to corroborate what I’m going to share here. These tips just come from my thirty plus adult years on this planet as a paying consumer of books, and my idea of how promotion can be done to keep me from annoying the heck out of my readership.

1. Don’t be Spammy on Social Media ~ Before I became a book writer, and thus, an entrepreneur with a product to sell, I hated spam. Now that I am a writer with a product to sell, I still hate spam, probably even moreso. Therefore, I struggle with the very idea of putting my book out there for purchase and asking my real life and social media friends to buy it. I had to talk myself into doing a lot of things I’ve never done before, like building a following, writing a blog, hanging out on social media sites. You have to strike a precarious balance with all of this, and there is no formula (or maybe there is and I’m just not aware of it). You have to do a lot of what I like to call organic interacting with your audience and not just bombard them with book promo stuff. Readers and fans know the difference, believe me. You have to know them well enough to discern how much is enough and how much is too much.

2. Cultivate Book Blog Reviews – This is an area that I’ll readily admit I suck in. There is no dearth of book blog sites out there that are ready and willing to rip your baby to shreds, or praise it to the highest heavens. You just have to be ready for the good, the bad, the ugly, and the indifferent (TGTBTUTI) when you go here. As I said, I have not done a good job of this. In large part, I haven’t done this because I haven’t wanted to deal with TGTBTUTI. You can call me a wuss or whatever, but I am that author whose debut on GoodReads got the ugly reviews that everyone fears. Sight unseen, book unread, I was rated harshly, called a few choice words, and then something miraculous happened: my book found a following without me promising my first born grandchild to one of the big book blogs. A woman whom I can only call my Fairy Book Goddess introduced me to a world of Book Clubs that I had no idea existed, let alone how to gain entrance. So yeah, I haven’t done the Big Book Blog Review thing, but I’m slowly moving in that direction, and hope to do a much better job of this when my second book is published.

3. Reciprocate/Network/Reciprocate – An author I admire whose short fiction workshop I took gave me the single most important advice I’ve ever received as a fledgling writer. She told me that as authors, we should embrace the concept of “paying forward.” By this she meant, we should do that thing that some fear. There are enough readers and book buyers to go around, so we shouldn’t fear promoting another author, sharing what we’ve learned, nor the act of pulling another fledgling writer up by their bootstraps. We all begin there, so do the karmic thing and help another writer out in any way you can. You will be rewarded for it. I belong to several promo centric groups where we share information, promote one another, and just provide an ear for one another. If you look at the authors who are in the best selling categories in our genre, you will find that many of them are part of these types of groups. If it worked for them, surely it can work for us.

4. Close The Sale – Primarily, I had to get used to doing what professional sales people do every day. Particularly, I had to learn how to ask for, or close the sale. This is a tricky thing in book sales particularly  because it’s been researched and widely (or maybe not so widely) written that book consumers generally have to be “exposed” to your work several times before they will actually buy it. Favorable reviews help, having a professional engaging product helps, but the generation of buzz is the coup de grâce. Once buzz is generated by readers who are genuinely excited about your book, they will definitively help you close the sale. At that point, all that’s left for you to do, is to keep the momentum going by other organic ways of promotion like going on book tours, both virtually and physically, accepting live interview invitations on Skype, podcasts, and/or radio and TV talks shows. Once you get there, the sky is the limit and your name will be on bestseller lists galore.

Available at most online booksellers.

Amazon

Also Now Available via audiobook at these fine retailers:

Audible

iTunes

I should have done this post yesterday, but I wanted to talk about Tristan and Nathan White yesterday, and the awesome model I found to portray the twins in pictures. So, I consider yesterday the actual beginning of my challenge since I did produce a post. Today I’m going to tell you guys about the #31Write Now Blog Challenge.

One of my wonderful readers, who also happens to operate as an administrator on my Facebook Group Page, The Block, sent me this challenge (yeah, I’m talking about you Natalie!). My first thought when she sent it to me was, “Now how in the heck does she think I have time to participate in this challenge? I only have a book to finish, an audiobook to promote, a demanding job, a dysfunctional family, and a whole host of other author- and non-author-related crap to do!” However, I thanked Natalie very kindly and enthused how I was going to get on it already, because it was August 1. (I hope Natalie doesn’t mind my using her as a “character” in this post. Well, I won’t share your last name and perhaps not all of Facebookdom will know who the heck you are!).

Afterwards, I read the post from the challenge blogger and one thing she said made me decide this challenge was indeed worth taking.  Luvvie said, “I thought I’d run out of things to talk about. Not so. My blog traffic actually doubled in that month, and I was pushed to write nonstop. It also showed me that the more I write, the more folks read.”

I’m not one to shy away from a challenge, and in this era of feast or famine in my writing life, I had to do something to kickstart my flagging mojo. So this exercise, my participation in this effort, is clearly  for selfish reasons. As writers, we are advised to write every day. Sometimes I find myself staring a blank screen (and if things are bad, sometimes I’m staring at a blank screen for days on end). I want to break this block I’ve been experiencing, and prime my creative juices, so I can finish my second book. Dammit!

I have a lot of things I can blame for this drought: my health, the accident I had earlier in the year, my job, my family obligations, my inability to write every day due to my other obligations, sophomore-itis, and on and on. However, I’m going to throw down the gauntlet in August and show my jacked up mojo who’s boss. Who’s with me?

To access Luvvie’s challenge go: HERE

oOo

#31WriteNow

Earlier this week the narrator of my new audiobook for Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever, Marie Helene, wrote me a very nice email. In it she advised newbie me that the audiobook would most likely be out in early August given ACX’s historical performance. She also gave me that much needed kick in the rear I needed to get going on promoting this new format of my book. Her kind encouragement really galvanized me to to create some nice passive promotional ads to raise awareness among my readership for the audiobook.

I have to admit that even though I played it cool with her, I was scared spitless about mounting a marketing campaign for Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever, the audiobook. I was clueless as to how to do this, but she thought my ideas were good, so I decided to run with them. So yesterday (yes, the audiobook came out yesterday), I contacted a friend of mine and asked her to help me by creating some stills that I could use for my characters, on which I could place some blurbs from the story. (I have to admit here, I’m kind of borrowing this idea from my friends Nia Forrester and Christopher Bynum who do this to perfection.)

My Facebook group, The Block, is very good at describing my characters for me. The members have all read Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever, some of them multiple times, and we’ve all participated in the fun of choosing actors we believe might be a good fit for my characters. We settled after much debate on Paul Walker (not the Paul Walker in the Fast & Furious franchise, but the Paul Walker in “Takers” wearing Armani or something close to it.) He is Tristan, or “Mr. Buttoned Down,” when he’s in the suit, and Nathan, “Mr. B-Baller, when he’s dressed down. However, I know I couldn’t use Paul Walker’s likeness in my campaign to represent Tristan and Nathan White. I had to find someone in my arsenal of stock photo sites to fit the bill. So, I rummaged on every site I could find, trying to locate my Tristan and Nate, and what follows is a model I found who comes very close. So when you see my passive little ads floating around on Facebook and other social media, you’ll immediately recognize these guys as Tristan and Nate White, my twin Dominants who get to sex up Keisha and Jada in Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever.

Let me know in the comments what you think about these photos of Tristan and Nathan White (or the model I’ve dubbed Tristan and Nathan White).

Tristan White

Nathan White

~*~

#31WriteNow

I totally forgot I participated in a blog tour with this group since it happened a while back. To my surprise, I received an email from them last night notifying me my book, Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever, was a finalist in their “Hall of Fame,” in the Erotica category selected by the Quality Reads UK Book Club.

So, what do I need you to to? I’m glad you asked. I need you to go here: VOTING! Select the Erotica Category, and VOILA! You’ll see my book listed there and you can vote. Easy Peasy?

Or, you can go directly to my category here: BEST EROTICA, so you won’t have slog through the others.

Thanks so much for supporting 50SoJF by voting for it in this contest

In the midst of writing book two of the Ghetto Girl Romance Quadrilogy, I was presented with the extraordinary opportunity to publish Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever as an audiobook via ACX. This organization provides self-published and indie authors the ability to sell their works on Audible.com, Amazon.com, and iTunes.

This platform will give readers on-the-go, the visually impaired, and readers who prefer a more dramatic flair to their books the ability to listen to the story being peformed by a professional narrator. I was fortunate to enough to hire the exquisite Marie Hélène, aka Delectable Voice to bring life to Keisha, Tristan, and their host of family and friends.

The audiobook is set to debut in Early August (Sorry I couldn’t give you a more definitive date. We believe it will be around about August 9th), but once it becomes available, the soundcloud link below will be populated with the purchase links for the audiobook.

So, within the next couple of weeks, I’ll be sharing visual and audio teasers, excerpts and blurbs from your favorites characters in Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever. If you count yourself among my readers, friends, fans, and author colleagues, please share this with your readers, friends, fans and colleagues!

Thanks so much!

I have been touting Tiffany Reisz’s The Siren as my favorite book within the genre I write since I read it last fall. Because I discovered it in the middle of writing my second book, I didn’t have the luxury of reading it several times and totally immersing myself in Nora Sutherlin’s world like I would have were I not a writer myself.

I miss the days when I was just a reader. As a reader you can read books over and over again until you either get enough, or desire to read more. With great books, you always desire to read more because you just know you’ve missed something pertinent as you devour the words. The Siren falls in the category of “great book” for me and is one that I will read again and again.

There are many things about The Siren I consider utter genius, which I will attempt to share with you in this review. First of all, I love that the heroine, Nora Sutherlin is an erotica writer who practices the peculiar brand of kink she writes about. She is also a Dominatrix whose clientele lists reads like a veritable Who’s-Who in New York City, and around the world. Although she is a best-seller at thirty-three, Nora is not embraced by the literary world, much like a true-to-life erotica writer we all know and some love today. However, unlike this best-selling erotica writer we know today, Nora Sutherlin agrees to work with a renowned editor to improve her story which is being published by Royal House Publishing.

Editor, Zachary Easton, nicknamed “The London Fog” because of his less-than-sunny disposition, has been assigned by his managing editor, J. P. Bonner to make Nora’s new book the stellar literary work it deserves to be. Zach reluctantly agrees to take Nora on conditionally. As he prepares to leave for the L.A. branch in six weeks, he will work with Nora on the rewrites, but he will decide once the book is finished if it should be published. After a rough start, surprisingly, Nora’s writing impresses Zach, and they work very well together–even through the growing attraction they have for each other.

Although they each have previous relationships (and in Nora’s case, a burgeoning current relationship) that preclude anything other than a physical relationship for them, Zach has assured Nora there won’t be any sex until after the book is finished. Nora rises to the challenge and uses this as her motivation to meet Zach’s deadline. She is also very driven, because she hopes her work will finally be validated by her new publisher.

As drawn to Nora as he is, Zach remains irrevocably in love with his estranged wife, Grace, and he tortures himself incessantly for having lost her. His feelings for Grace continue to exist even though he indulges himself with guilt-ridden fantasies about Nora. While Nora remains irrevocably in love with Søren, the man who introduced her to BDSM, and exercises her Catholic guilt over her feelings for Wesley, her nineteen year old assistant. There is a healthy amount of guilt and secrets to go around for all.

Reisz masterfully develops the characters, peeling layer after layer of their secrets back to reveal exactly who they are. Another facet of the genius of the author is her use of the juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane, skillfully interwoven in a way that one might believe revolting to both the truly religious and the atheist alike, but somehow Reisz makes it all work. She also infuses Nora Sutherlin with that inimitable quality that some women possess which makes other women immediately hate her. I expected to despise Nora by the end of the book, but she and all the other players were written so beautifully, the objective reader can only love them and root for them to be happy. However, because there’s only one Nora and three men (in this book) who are part of her romantic life, someone is going to be hurt.

Nora cloaks her vulnerability in a blunt, unapologetic, in-your-face strength that could be off-putting, but you can’t resist loving her, as all the men in her life clearly do. Zach is taciturn and charming, but tortured by a guilty conscience of his own making. Kingsley Edge is one character I really want to get to know better, but what I saw of him in The Siren was very intriguing. Søren is an enigma, but impressive nonetheless. I had a hard time liking him in the beginning, but he redeems himself in my eyes eventually (and I won’t tell you how, because I’m not going to spoil). And, Wes, the vanilla Christian boy who loves a Dominatrix is absolutely fascinating.

This is one of the most intelligently written books I’ve ever read, bar none. It goes to show that even in the genre of erotica; there are also levels of literary greatness to aspire to, and to be achieved. Tiffany Reisz does this in spades.

The Siren savages your emotions, yet leaves you wanting and needing to have your heart shredded anew; as I’m sure Reisz will happily do again in The Angel, The Prince and coming very soon, The Mistress.

I give The Siren five stars.

o^O^o

Tiffany Reisz lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her boyfriend (a reformed book reviewer) and two cats (one good, one evil). She graduated with a B.A. in English from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky and is making both her parents and her professors proud by writing BDSM erotica under her real name. She has five piercings, one tattoo, and has been arrested twice.

When not under arrest, Tiffany enjoys Latin Dance, Latin Men, and Latin Verbs. She dropped out of a conservative southern seminary in order to pursue her dream of becoming a smut peddler. Johnny Depp’s aunt was her fourth grade teacher. Her first full-length novel THE SIREN was inspired by a desire to tie up actor Jason Isaacs (on paper). She hopes someday life will imitate art (in bed).

THE SIREN was awarded the RT Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best Erotic Romance 2012.

If she couldn’t write, she would die.

o^O^o

BUY LINKS:

The Siren – Amazon

The Angel – Amazon

The Prince – Amazon

The Mistress – Amazon

Technologically unsavvy me couldn’t figure out how to re-blog this, but I wanted to share with you guys. So, click the link below, or “Read More” to get to the rest of the original article ~ LV
Guest Blogger: L.V. Lewis – Trust Your Instincts

Posted  by Jen Matera on Jul 24, 2013 inWrite Divas |Guest Posts |

Today at Write Divas, we’re excited to bring you a special guest post from Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever author L. V. Lewis as she talks about how to trust your instincts and listen to your gut when it comes to your story:

~oOo~
Trust Your Instincts by L. V. Lewis
When you’re a newbie at anything, being unsure of yourself sort of comes with the territory. As I began to write again after a decade or more of radio silence, as it were, I returned to study my craft and put pen to paper—or fingers to keyboard—just when self-publishing began to ramp up as a viable option. I saw it as an extraordinarily serious option for older writers, like myself, who…

READ MORE

~oOo~

Find L.V. Lewis on:

Goodreads ~ Website ~ Twitter