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Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Protect and Defend is in PRINT!


I just went to the Jasmine Jade site to see what books were available on sale...MINE IS!!! Protect and Defend is out in trade paper and on sale for $15. OMG. I can't believe it. Like wow!

Protect and Defend in trade paper at Jasmine Jade Enterprises.
Holy smokes!

Friday, July 10, 2009

RWA Conference fast approaches.

Greetings all,
The RWA National Conference is quickly approaching and I'm nervous and feeling out of sorts. I haven't really gotten myself together and I leave on Sunday. Robin Rotham is going to pick me up as she passes through Iowa and by the end of the trip we will either adore or loathe one another. :-) I'm voting for the former. I think Robin is a pretty cool chick AND an excellent writer.

Still, when I attended RWA two years ago I was so much more organized than I am this year. I feel like a chicken with my head cut off...flopping around mindlessly while people wait for me to wind down before they throw me in the pot for supper. Yeah - it's a rather grim kind of metaphor but it fits.

I'm looking forward to touring Washington D.C. though. I've never been in the nation's capitol before so I'm planning to hit all the sites. Or as many as I can get to between conference sessions and parties. I'm planning to visit the Library of Congress and the Holocaust Museum. I want to see all the monuments. Washington, Lincoln, VietNam, WWII, etc. If I can manage it, I want to visit the National zoo too. Not sure about that one though. I'm going to take a ton of pics - that much is certain.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Happy 4th of July!


Nope - not traveling this year. I'm home and relaxing. I woke up this morning hearing all kinds of sirens and realized the parade had started down town. It was nice sleeping in.
So to all fellow U.S. Citizens - Happy Independence Day!
To everyone else - hey, have a great day!






Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Save the School of Gallantry


I want to welcome my guest today, Delilah Marvelle. She's the author of Mistress of Pleasure and the soon to be released, Lord of Pleasure.

***


When I was in high school, I had a dream. I was going to be the next Stephen King. Heh. Yeah. Stay with me. Please. I knew my ideas were fabulous and I knew all it would take is for an editor to look at it and they would offer me up the moon and the stars and best of all, a contract. I had my girlfriends read everything I wrote. And they kept telling me, “This is fabulous! It's SO funny! Hilarious!” Seeing it really wasn't supposed to BE funny, I immediately changed course realizing I actually had a better handle on being funny than scary. I also figured adding a romance into it would even make it better since that is what I loved to read.

I then entered college as an English major. I was going to be teacher and write during the summers. Even then I was a smart girl who knew I wasn't going to make jack and that I needed a job to support the “creative” one. Throughout all of college I wrote historical romances. One right after another. And kept submitting. And submitting. And submitting. And kept getting rejected and rejected and rejected. In the meantime, I got married. I had two kids. I joined RWA. I got critique partners. I did honed and honed and honed the crap out of my writing. And kept writing and getting rejected. I eventually racked up over 200 rejections and had written over 40 books in those 11 years of trying to get published.

When I finally sold my first historical romance, MISTRESS OF PLEASURE, and my second book, LORD OF PLEASURE, I was beside myself. It didn't feel real. To FINALLY arrive at a destination I had been traveling toward for 11 long years seemed like a mirage. Which fortunately, I quickly snapped out of. Because after all, most of my friends are all published and unpublished writers and the stories they all have told me throughout the years made me realize I had to fight with fists up for myself every step of the way. I knew publishers did little to no promotion for their authors, so I spearheaded my own promo, ready to be more than just an author. And even though I was budgeting very well and spending countless hours networking and promoting on websites and blogs, doing tons for free, I still ended up spending $7,000 on my first book. Which was way more than my advance. But hey, every business starts in the red. Right?

Then the reviews started coming in about my series set in 1830 London England about a school that educates men on the topic of love and seduction. People loved it! Wow. It got nominated for awards. Wow. Readers are e-mailing me raving. Wow. Readers from France, Austria, Poland, South Africa and from all over the U.S and the world.. Wow. It just kept getting better and better. I was beginning to feel as if every penny I spent was all worth it (even though my family and I weren't going on any vacations and were eating out of cans). Because all that mattered was that my publisher loved me and my readers loved my series.

Come contract time, I'm ready for whatever they wanna throw at me. Or so I thought. Mistress of Pleasure, though completely sold out and unavailable anywhere (unless it's a used copy, some going for a ridiculous amount of $40.00), hadn't done as well as my publisher had hoped. So without waiting for the second book to come out to see if the series was even worth saving, I get a rejection from my own editor citing lack of sales.

I have to say this rejection felt more personal than any of the other two hundred and some rejections I'd received. Because it was no longer “Your book isn't good enough” it became “Your sales aren't good enough.” Since when is an author supposed to be a market guru AND a fabulous writer? Eck.

I love this series. The men in it make me laugh and it broke my heart to think that my readers will never get a chance to read about Lord Brayton, my glorious male virgin. The only alpha virgin I've ever written about. Then I realized something, why I am letting a publisher decide what is worth holding on to? Shouldn't that be a reader's job?

Ah. Herein lies the purpose of my post. I am challenging everyone, be they readers or writers to help me do something that's never been done before. Save a series from a death sentence given by a publisher. Can it be done? Who knows. But I eat challenges for breakfast and I hope you do to. Please join me in saving my series. Come August 4th, tell everyone you know (yes, even your 72 year old grandfather) to buy the book, Lord of Pleasure. In doing so, you'll have a chance to win one of three $50 Visa Gift Cards. How? Check out my website for details at http://www.delilahmarvelle.com/

That said, thank you for all the support and love everyone has already shown me by allowing me to blog about this. Feel free to post and repost this to everyone under the moon and the stars. To all you readers out there, thank you for supporting us writers. To all you writers out there, don't ever give up on your writing. The moment you do, you give up on yourself. Which is why I'm not giving up on my series.

Cheers and much love,
Delilah Marvelle