Lily Malone's Blog, page 17

I have made fabulous progress on Fairway To Heaven this week, my new golf romance. (So far, there hasn’t been that much golf in it, actually). I finished Chapter 8 Thursday night, and am approaching the 30,000 words.

This story, so far, is behaving nicely. Although some pesky squid on the Busselton Jetty, are not! Jenn and Brayden just had a squid incident at three paces… fun.

But writing takes a back seat for me this weekend because it’s my son’s sixth birthday and on Sunday, roughly 10 boys and 1 girl (token girl – she’s coming because she’s one of the ‘real’ guests’ sister)… and those of their parents who feel like staying, are all descending on our house. (Our rather on-the-small-side, rented house, I might add).

So shortly, I’m off shopping for party stuff, like: party bags, lollies, prizes and things from which I shall make cake. My friend Kylie from South Australia is the Queen of kids’ birthday parties. She bakes the most incredible cup cakes and made a ‘boat’ cake for her son last year. I’m not going that far, I’d only set myself up for failure – but she’s given me a recipe that sounds simple enough to make an ice-cream cake, and for the actual ‘birthday cake’ I’m relying on a packet. I’m hopeful of any shape that’s not flat in the centre or squashed.

Here’s Kylie’s ice cream cake recipe:

2 cups of cream, 1 tin of condensed milk. Whip, add choc chips or berries.(anything you fancy really) Line dish with plastic wrap then glad bake. Pour in and freeze overnight. The easiest and the best ice cream cake! Happy Birthday to Mr 6. from us. xxxx He will love whatever you do.

Italics on the last line are mine, because times like this I have to remember the simple things!

Now, the lovelyGracie Macgregor, author of Hearts On Hold, invited me to spend Friday night at her Calypso Bar. I figure with the birthday party hanging over me, a bar is just the right kind of place for me (not to mention, I might need it at the end of this weekend!)

Wish me luck and come visit me in Gracie’s bar if you’d like!

Who likes FREEBIES? Welcome to the next installment of Ros Baxter’s Hump Day Handouts, a new competition where you can win a FOUR-pack of hot new ebooks to read on your kindle, ipad, iphone or desktop. (Only today – just for you – it’s a FIVE-pack!!)

You can win (drumroll please):

1. Nicole Flockton’s bestselling Bound by Her Ring

2. The hot debut Lost in Kakadu by Kendall Talbot

3. My book His Brand of Beautiful AND (of course)

4. Ros Baxter’s very own hip mermaid mystery Fish Out of Water.

BUT WAIT (as the ad says) there’s more!!! Because the lovely Ros is a generous kind of girl, this week she’s  also giving away Taming the Tycoon from the totally fabulous Amy Andrews, who has sold over a million books.

[More details and blurbs for the four books are here:

http://www.rosbaxterink.com/freebies.php]

To be in the running to WIN, all you need to do is like the facebook pages of each of the five authors (listed below) and comment “done” in the comments section of Ros Baxter’s FB page (link here). Easy peasy!

1. https://www.facebook.com/NicoleFlockton

2.https://www.facebook.com/KendallTalbotBooks

3. https://www.facebook.com/lily.lilymalone

4. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Amy-Andrews/382936461720040

AND last but not least:

5. https://www.facebook.com/RosBaxterInk

The competition will be drawn at 8pm Sunday AEST.

Good luck, and please share with your friends!

My contemporary romance novella, The Goodbye Ride is now in its second period of the KDP Kindle Select program at Amazon. This means for 90 days (3 months) you list your book exclusively with Amazon and during that period, you get 5 days where you can offer your book on a free promotion. That’s the upside of Kindle Select. The downside is, you can’t offer your book on any other platform (iTunes or Nook for example, or Smashwords.)

When The Goodbye Ride launched in late May, I took advantage of the free days to promote the book on its release. During that period, 2650 people took advantage of the promotion to download my book. The best ranking I saw it gain during the promotion was #282 Free in Kindle Store. (Read that post here if you like.)

Now I have something to compare that initial free period against, as I’ve just completed today, the second three-day free period for the book.

This time, 3174 readers downloaded my book. The highest I saw it rank was #111 (it was so exciting to think it might have gone Top 100 Free, but given it was late Sunday night at the time, I couldn’t stay awake to see what happened next).

Stop press! The lovely Ana from This Chick Reads says she saw it reach 63!! So it did crack the Top 100 Free on Kindle!

Amazon.com (US, Australia, NZ) had by far the biggest download numbers over the period, with 3068—more than 1000 copies of the book a day, which was great.

The interest this time wasn’t so high elsewhere. In the UK 78 readers downloaded the book, followed by Canada (8), India (7), Germany (4), France and Italy (3), Spain (2) and Japan (1).

I didn’t make such an effort at promoting it as I did when it launched (in terms of contacting promotional sites that offer free opportunities to include your book during its free days). But what I think is worth mentioning is, the first free period I promoted quite heavily with my friends, and within the Facebook Group for Romance Writers’ Australia. This time around, most of my friends and RWA contacts would have already read (or downloaded and not yet read) my book. So I feel, though without proof, most of these readers were in the US.

The big difference I think, is to do with the reviews. The Goodbye Ride has 13 reviews now, compared with none when the book launched. All the reviews for it on Amazon are 4 or 5 stars. I think it’s a fair comment to say, there are a lot of books that go free that may not necessarily be particularly good books. If you have some positive reviews before you offer the book free, I think it really helps your book to stand out.

Readers are spoiled for choice. They are also time-poor. There are just too many good books out there, and much like bad wine, life is too short to read bad books (even if they’re free).

I don’t know if I will keep The Goodbye Ride in the KDP program after this next 3-month period expires… but I am a bit slack at the idea of publishing it on Smashwords, or some of the other platforms. I am also trying to focus hard on writing my next book, Fairway To Heaven.

Hopefully some of the people who downloaded The Goodbye Ride over the weekend will take the time to contact me if they’ve enjoyed it, or write a review, or tell their friends (please! tell your friends!). I’ve picked up one lovely 5-star new review so far.

Perhaps if readers like The Goodbye Ride, they may also buy my Escape Published title, His Brand Of Beautiful.

At the end of the day, as a new author, the opportunity to get my work in readers hands, is – well – it’s kinda priceless!

My short, sweet (not too sweet) Aussie novella, The Goodbye Ride, is free this weekend (Friday through Sunday) exclusive to Amazon.

Don’t forget to vote though! I’d hate you to be so engrossed in my book, you missed the chance to exercise your democratic rights!

Here’s the link!

http://www.amazon.com/The-Goodbye-Ride-ebook/dp/B00CV2MGCK/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1

I’m participating in the Three Wishes Blog Blitz , hosted by author Juliet Madison! From 2nd to 6th September you’ll have the chance to win some awesome prizes at all the blogs participating in the blitz, including mine.

Why is it called the Three Wishes Blog Blitz? Juliet’s new  romantic comedy release, I Dream of Johnny, is about three wishes, a high-tech genie in a lamp, and one very unfortunate typo that proves magic isn’t all it cracked up to be…

The Lily Malone ‘wishlist’ is a bit too x-rated to include in a non-x-rated blog (it includes way too many scenarios with Timothy Olyphant and Charlie Hunnam) so instead I thought I’d let the heroines in my books  rub their own magic lamp today, and tell you what they’d wish for.

Christina Clay is the eccentric, hat-wearing, clay-pigeon shooting, horse-riding, winery executive, city girl, who stars in my Escape Publishing contemporary romance, His Brand Of Beautiful. Here’s what Christina would wish for, if she discovered a magic lamp in the op-shops she regularly visits:

A world without snakes or lizards or scaly things that might slither beneath the timber slats of an outback camp shower
A bottle of champagne that never ends, and never loses its fizz
Legs as long and luscious as those of her best friend, Lacy Graham.

Olivia Murphy is the Ducati-loving viticulturist who features in my contemporary romance novella, The Goodbye Ride. This is what Liv would wish for if she found a magic lamp in one of her vineyards.

That her brother was still alive
That jeans and a pink beanie counted as ‘smart-casual’
That cooking salt and pepper squid was as easy as making baked beans on toast.

The shack on the beach where Jenn goes to retrieve her missing mojo in my new book, Fairway To Heaven. (Picture is for illustrative purposes only!)

Jennifer (Jenn) Gates is the golf-playing, freelance writing, mother of a toddler son, now coming to life in my new book, Fairway to Heaven. I am about 20,000 words in and Jenn is trying to get her mojo back (after discovering her golf-pro boyfriend cheating on her with one of his golf students) on a long weekend stay at this beach shack.

If she discovered a magic lamp in the shed at the back of the shack, this is what she’d wish for:

That her cheating ex-boyfriend, Jack, develops a massive case of the putting yips and never sinks a putt again
That her 14-month-old toddler will wake up tomorrow toilet trained
That Brayden Culhane doesn’t consider the kiss they shared at this beach house eight years ago as “the biggest mistake of his life.”

Giveaway:

Follow the instructions below to win my prize, and then you can click over to Juliet’s blog to enter her prize draw, and see the list of all other blogs taking part and enter their giveaways as well. How cool is that? 

My prizes include your choice of: a copy of His Brand Of Beautiful, a copy of The Goodbye Ride, and (because it’s so new) the opportunity to have a character named after you in my new book, Fairway To Heaven!  I’m also offering a world-exclusive! Like my Facebook page to read my 3000-word short story Fairway To Heaven, on which this new book is based. (You’ll need to send me an email at [email protected] for that one too).

My question: If you could be the heroine of a movie or a book, which heroine would you wish to be and why?

You can answer in the comments. (If you ‘like’ my Facebook page during the Blog Blitz (2 September to 6 September) www.facebook/lily.lilymalone I’m sure I’ll come up with something special for you too!)

Remember: Once you’ve entered my giveaway, visit Juliet’s blog & enter her giveaway too, and visit any or all of the other participating blogs to enter more prize draws. You could potentially win a whole heap of prizes! Good luck! Visit the official Blog Blitz post here:  http://julietmadison.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/3-wishes-blog-blitz-official-post/  

Iris Blobel has a new release out this week, New Beginnings.

Can you imagine how hard it must be to write in a language that isn’t your native tongue? I mean, it’s hard enough to write in the first place, didn’t Hemmingway say: “Writing is easy, you just sit at your typewriter and bleed…” or something along those lines. But writing in English when your native language is German? Man, the thought of that just blows my mind.

So I’m thrilled to host Iris Blobel on my blog today. Iris and I are kindred spirits, in that I have a special affinity for ‘flower’ names. Iris. Lily. Rose. Petunia. Azalea. (Okay, now I’m being silly).

When Iris read my novella, The Goodbye Ride, earlier this year she commented that: “Google was a good friend over these few days. It amazed me how many new words I learnt … I should’ve written them down.” Then I saw her star on Susanne Bellamy’s fabulous Sunday blog, “All The World’s A Page”, and she mentioned then her German heritage and the challenge she faces at times, writing romance in English.

So I’ve asked her to elaborate, and here’s what she had to say:

“After more than 15 years here in Australia, I’d consider my English good. Sometimes too good according to my girls. They get really annoyed when I correct their grammar – during a casual conversation that is, not in their homework (yes, I do that, too, the poor little souls). I still have little slip ups. Or big ones! I recently used the word “suffice” in a business email. I had heard it a few days earlier and liked it. I obviously didn’t use it in the right context Embarrassing to say the least!”

“My grammar is usually okay, the sentence structure can be funny if not hilarious. Writing the stories in a different language is not that hard at all. After all, it makes sense to me. And you have to admit I love you does sound better than Ich liebe Dich, right? The struggles I have, though, is finding the right words to convey what I want to say … and then I ask my husband whether whatever I come up with makes sense. The usual answer is a shrug and a “S’pose so”. Not really all that helpful.

“Bottom line, IMHO, I don’t think the language makes the difference, but the way you use the words … I still have a lot to learn here and am very grateful for my wonderful and patient editors.”

Iris has her new book out, New Beginnings. I downloaded it this week but I haven’t read it yet. So why not see for yourself whether Iris’s ‘non-English’ background shines through in her stories.

New Beginnings is now available at most online stores or at the links below.

To believe in new beginnings is to trust in tomorrow

Twenty-two-year-old Sophie Levesque has been guardian to eight-year-old sister Mia since their mother’s death a few years ago. Luck comes their way when they inherit a small house in Hobart. Problem is though, they don’t know of, and have never heard of Clara Bellinger, the testator. Sophie is afraid it’s all been a mistake.

As Mia settles well into her new school and life in general, Sophie is not only occupied by her search of what connected her to Clara, but also her new studies and the two men, who suddenly have become part of her daily life – Mark O’Connor, the lawyer representing Clara’s estate, and Zach, the hunk from across the road.

Ooh! Sounds like fun, Iris, who doesn’t love it when there’s a hunk across the road, and what a great location in beautiful Hobart?

You can find New Beginnings here:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/New-Beginings-ebook/dp/B00ENU02BU/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1377251351&sr=1-1

Astraea Press: http://astraeapress.com/#!/~/product/category=662245&id=27261175

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/349320

Bookstrand: http://www.bookstrand.com/new-beginnings-6

About Iris:

Iris Blobel was born and raised in Germany and only immigrated to Australia in the late 1990s. Having had the travel bug most of her life, Iris spent quite some time living in Scotland, London as well as Canada where she  met her future husband. Her love for putting her stories onto paper has only recently emerged, but now her laptop is a constant companion. Iris resides west of Melbourne with her husband and her beautiful two daughters as well as two dogs. Next to her job at a private school she also presents a German Program at the local Community Radio.

To Whom It May Concern:

It’s the first sunny day in Margaret River in weeks, and our owner has just taken us walking. Cruel, cruel woman, she didn’t even slather us in moisturiser. We went out in public unshaven. We are two shades short of lily white. We bought traffic to a stand-still for all the wrong reasons (apologies to the truck driver we blinded). And SHE called it research for her new book.We are officially on strike, and if she posts our photo, we will sue.

Yours sincerely,

Lily Malone’s legs.

Dear legs,

Perhaps if you’d responded once to the zillion leg-lifts I’d done in my youth, I’d be more inclined to sympathise. However, you have always been ahem, top-heavy in the thighs, despite my every effort, and I have yet to find any exercise that can cure knobbly knees.
Therefore: Suck it up!

Lily Malone.


A few weeks ago, one of those “give us 7 lines from page 7, or 77, of your latest release or work in progress games” went around my friends on Facebook. I was tagged a couple of times but at the time, I had nothing to put out on display that I felt proud of.

In the last few weeks (as readers of my blog will know) I feel like I’ve got my writing mojo back, and except for time out on the RWA Conference, I’ve been steadily working away on my new book.

So please be my guest, and take a world-first-exclusive look at a few paragraphs from Fairway To Heaven – it’s my contemporary golf story about lust in the bunkers and love on the greens. (Although for this particular bit of the story, they happen to be on the beach, and Jennifer Gates (my heroine) is lamenting the state of her legs.) See? Research. The things we do!



Excerpt:
Fairway To Heaven

Then, the beach unfurls before us, mile on mile of hard-packed sand the colour of white pepper, strewn with drying strands of brown seaweed, as if the mermaids cut their hair.

Busselton Jetty straddles the water far to the right. Where the famous landmark meets the coast, pines jut from the foreshore.

“There’s a train that runs out the jetty now,” Brayden says, setting Seb’s feet on the sand. “You’ll have to take him out there.”

“Maybe. We’ll see.” I struggle with forking out cash on tourist things Seb won’t remember. Call me killjoy.

My city brain struggles to comprehend all this space. Geographe Bay curls gently, like a soft scarf cupping a shallow wine glass. We’re in prime school holiday time, yet it isn’t packed. I know that near the jetty—with its funparks and cafes—there’ll be crowds. Here, no one is in your pocket. I like that.

“This looks like a good spot,” I say, heading left, kicking off my sandals so I can enjoy the warm sand on my feet.

Brayden spreads the towels to mark our territory and I rummage in my bag for sunscreen to squirt over Seb’s arms and legs.

“Here.” I hand Seb’s Thomas Tank Engine cap to Brayden. “You see if you have the knack. He won’t keep it on for me.”

He picks the orange bulldozer from my bag and carries it to where last night’s high tide has left a signature on the sand.

Brayden gives the dozer to Seb, who squats on the beach. As he starts ploughing, Brayden stoops and pops the cap on my son’s head. I wait for those little hands to send it cartwheeling toward the sea, and of course, he leaves it perfectly in place. My sun-smart little angel.

I sit on the towel and lean back on my outstretched hands. The sand is incredibly fine, and I bury my feet, then lift them, and let the grains pour between my toes. If I balance my feet just right, I figure I can cover my unpainted toenails, but there’s nothing short of a sheet that can hide my lily white legs.

I really am a disgrace to the female race.

Lily with Nicole Harris at the Nautical Or Nice Cocktail Party at RWA Conference. (That’s me on the left).

This weekend has been conference weekend for members of Romance Writers of Australia. They’ve been enjoying their annual conference, this year in Fremantle in West Australia. (Kind of part of Perth, but with great coast, yachting, a fantastic old prison, old buildings and about the most character you can find in a big city).

I couldn’t stay for all the Conference, but I drove up from my home at Margaret River for the ‘Nautical Or Nice’ Cocktail party on Friday night, to meet my critique partner from Brisbane (the soon to be pubished, Kylie Kaden) for the first time, and to share pre-Saturday conference breakfast with my fellow Escape Artists and Managing Editor Kate Cuthbert, (Escape Publishing).

I was also lucky enough to have lunch in Mandurah on the way back from the Conference Saturday, with WriteNote1 book reviewer, arts publicist, op-shopping extraordinaire, and former journalist, Monique Mulligan. Three hours we found ourselves chatting and lunching… that’s not bad for a first date!

With book reviewer and blogger, Monique Mulligan in Mandurah. (That’s me on the right).

 

It was wonderful meeting people who I’ve only met (so far) through email, Facebook or author groups, however, something that amazed me about the weekend was how difficult it was to spot people from their social media photographs and avatars. Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me, after all, we were all supposed to be in costume.

In no particular order, here are the people I think DO look like their avatars, and who I was able to spy across a crowded room and think: aha, that is X.

1) Juanita Kees

2) Ros Baxter

3) Cate Ellink

4) Imelda Evans

5) Victoria Purman

And then there are the people who I would not have recognised from two feet away in bright sunlight! Would you believe I actually took a photograph of Jennie Jones with her friend Nicole Harris, and it was only as I was looking at Jennie through the lens of the camera that I got an inkling about who she was!

1) Lisa Ireland (Dressed in a pirate outfit, Lisa cheated by straightening her hair!)

2) Jennie Jones (Jennie cheated too because lately her avatars have been collages of her brilliant book cover, House on Burra Burra Lane, – that’s my excuse JJ and I’m sticking to it!)

3) Natasha Devereaux (Natasha’s avatar is eye-popping because she has a huge snake wrapped around her shoulders – yes – a real one. Without the snake, she was unrecognisable!)

Now I should add, I got in a lot of trouble myself because people were expecting me to wear my pink beanie, which has become something of a trademark on my Facebook author page, and on Twitter. But I ask you, does a pink beanie really go with a pirate outfit? More particularly, with red pants and a red scarf on said pirate outfit? And even more particularly, with a pirate hat? No, dear reader, it doesn’t. So I didn’t wear my beanie, and in turn, nobody recognised me!

It also didn’t help that somewhere in the world of lanyards and name tags… I happened to miss out on getting one. So people couldn’t cheat and double-check my tummy to spot my name hanging from a ribbon around my neck!

So cutting to the chase (finally), this has got me thinking about all things avatars and gravatars, and it has made me realise something about myself. When I first began this blog, and for the first year of this blog’s life, my avatar has been deliberately unrecognisable. That’s because I was way too shy to want anyone who knew me, to know I was writing romance. However, during 2013, and particularly in the last few months, I’ve been doing the romance writer’s literary equivalent to coming out of the closet.

My ‘pink beanie’ picture first appeared on Jenn J McLeod’s Author Harvest blog back in February. Then it was introduced to my author page on Facebook, and my Twitter account, and lately I’ve been using it more in my blog.

From Butt…

… to beanie.

Last week, I updated my ‘About Me’ page and changed my ‘unrecognisable’ photo (the picture many people refer to as my ‘butt photo’… to the beanie photo.)

It’s a small change, but it’s showing how far I’ve come in confidence in the last year. I’m comfortable now to give

Lily Malone a face, rather than a butt. (Although that butt will always have a place in my heart… if that’s possible without some major anatomical reshuffling).

Right now, the only place Lily’s butt remains is on my friend page with Facebook. I’m not quite sure I can let that derriere disappear just yet… we shall see!

To everyone I was able to meet in person during #RWAus13 it was wonderful to put your face to your name, and to absent friends, you were very much missed!

I was really interested today to read on Facebook that Imogene Nix has a new release out, called: A Sapphire For Karina.

The sapphire was the jewel used in the Romance Writers of Australia 2013 Little Gems anthology. I know, because I entered a story in the Little Gems competition too. Stories for Little Gems had to be 3000 words maximum and the ‘sapphire’ had to feature somewhere in the story. Imogene said on Facebook that she has ”reworked, expanded the scenes and decided to self publish” A Sapphire For Karina.

My Little Gems’ sapphire story was called Fairway To Heaven, and in the story, the Sapphire related to a brand of golf clubs, Cobra Sapphires.

One of three judges rated my story in the 90s, but it didn’t sit so well with the other two. The important thing though, I loved it. It was my first foray into writing with a first person point of view, and in present tense.

When I scrapped ‘the book that will never be written’ (see previous post), it was to Fairway To Heaven I turned for inspiration. In the last fortnight, I’ve done more actual fingers on keyboard writing time than I’ve managed since May, when The Goodbye Ride novella released.

Now I’m getting a feel for what screenwriters and authors do when they’re adapting story ideas. I’m having fun creating the characters, scenes and conflicts for what was a 3000-word story, out to something that should become a full-length contemporary romance of around the 80,000 word mark.

Someday soon, I intend to post the original version of Fairway To Heaven on this site… although I must admit after a few Facebook chuckles whenever I mention this title, I’m contemplating changing this for my novel to The Sweetest Swing…

If you’d like to make a vote on the title – you’re most welcome!

Thanks to Eden Summers, who has her new Escape Publishing title, Ravenous, out now, a group of Australian and international authors has joined to provide a massive book prize giveaway at the Riverina Romantics blog.

You could win a copy of my books, The Goodbye Ride or His Brand Of Beautiful, plus more than enough titles to keep you e-reading all year.

All the details are at the Riverina Romantics blog.

Enjoy!

(If you’re like me and you can’t win second prize in a two-horse race, you can always buy my books by clicking on the cover link).