Category: Marrying A Monster

News and Updates

Posted on Posted in Cool Websites, Fantasy, Jaiya, Marketing, Marrying A Monster, Mel Dunay, NaNoWriMo, Paranormal Romance, Publishing Plans, WritingLeave a comment

Hello, everyone! Here in the USA, we are transitioning out of spooky candy overload and preparing for turkey meat overload. (Any comments mentioning the election will be marked as spam. Doesn’t matter who you voted for. I don’t care, and I am not kidding).

NaNoWriMo wordcount as of right now is around 17200, but since I’m aiming for 19000 by end of today, I need to get busy.

The big news is that I signed up with the Italian ebook aggregator Streetlib, and Marrying A Monster is now live (in English) on on the French retailer FNAC, and on the Mexican retailer Librerías Gandhi. It will soon be live on Google Play, Overdrive and a number of Italian, Spanish, Polish, Turkish and Russian ebook vendors and library services. I also have my own e-bookstore on the streetlib website.

I joined the Streetlib aggregator primarily to distribute my books to Google Play. Google Play is notorious for slashing prices on ebooks without the publisher’s permission, and Streetlib only allows publishers and self-publishers to set a single price for all the channels they distribute to.

The result is that the default price for my books through the vendors that Streetlib aggregates is going to be on the high side, except in cases where the retailer takes the initiative to discount them or price-match to Amazon (as FNAC and Gandhi seem to be doing).

Science Fiction & Fantasy $0.99 Sale!

Posted on Posted in Cheap Books, Cool Websites, Covers, Fantasy, Jaiya, Marketing, Marrying A Monster, Mel Dunay, Paranormal Romance, UncategorizedLeave a comment

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Patty Jansen has pulled together over a hundred and eighty books that are on sale in these genres (Science Fiction Fantasy, and Fantasy Romance), and sorted them by store: basically, you click here or on the image above, and then beneath the banner you click on the store symbol of your choice (Amazon, Nook, Kobo, etc) and then you can see the books available in each store. I’m very grateful to Patty for doing all this work, and very glad for the chance to participate in this sale, which runs today and tomorrow.

Yet Another Cool Source for Free and Discounted Ebooks!

Posted on Posted in Cool Websites, Jaiya, Marketing, Marrying A Monster, Mel Dunay, NaNoWriMo, Paranormal Romance, WritingLeave a comment

I booked a promotional slot for today with Ebookasaurus, another website which keeps its readers informed of all the best sales available on ebooks. This one covers multiple stores, so if your preferred store is Nook, iBooks, Kobo, etc, they have you covered. Feel free to check them out!

In other news: National Noveling Writing Month 2016 has begun! Once more into the breach, my friends….

David Neth Halloween 2016 Cross Promo!

Posted on Posted in Cheap Books, Cool Websites, Fantasy, Jaiya, Marketing, Marrying A Monster, Mel Dunay, Myth, Paranormal Romance, WritingLeave a comment

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Wooo! Lots of scary savings in this cross-genre promotion hosted by David Neth. Nearly 60 authors, including myself, have Halloween-friendly books in a variety of genres on sale for $0.99, from now until Halloween.

We have everything from ghosts to zombies to (a lot of) vampires to a couple of shifters, including Marrying A Monster. (Yes, there is a shifter in Monster, but he is more like the Incredible Hulk than Jacob from the Twilight books or Curran from Magic Bites and its sequels). David has been kind enough to sort the books by creature.

Anyway, with so many different authors and monsters on hand, I’m sure there’s something in there for everyone, so click here to check it out!

NaNoWriMo: Music to Write Books To

Posted on Posted in Fantasy, Jaiya, Marrying A Monster, Mel Dunay, Music, Myth, Paranormal Romance, Tia Baden, Writing2 Comments

I’ve talked a little bit about music as a productivity tool, particularly in regard to outlining.  Today I would like to talk about music to write books to.  I personally have trouble listening to music with lyrics when I am writing.  I just start thinking about the singer’s words instead of my own.  For this reason, I tend to favor movie soundtracks or video game soundtracks.

Modern movie soundtracks tend to have many sedate passages with no clear melody or rhythm so there are usually only one or two tracks that work with my writing play lists.  What I had found works the best when it comes to movie music, tends to be soundtracks written between 1965 and 1990.  There is usually a main theme catchy and memorable, repeated in several different variations across the soundtrack.  There may also be a memorable villain theme or a sweet love theme, which may appear several times.

I usually did not give enough face time to my villains for them to rate their own play list of villain themes, but sometimes a play list of love themes comes in handy.  Most of the time, I turn to a game soundtrack that is driven and adventurous, repetitive enough and catchy enough to keep the fingers galloping over the keyboard, sinister enough to include the villain, romantic enough for the love story.  This soundtrack is Castlevania: Curse of Darkness, by Michiru Yamane.

I like her soundtracks to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Castlevania: Lament of Innocence even more as music than I do Curse of Darkness, but for me they’re too closely associated with my memories of playing the games when I was younger.  For some reason I never got around to Curse of Darkness, so the tunes are still fresh for me, and I can associate them with whatever I’m writing.  I particularly like these tracks: Baljhet Mountains, Garibaldi Courtyard, Garibaldi Temple, Mortavia Aqueduct, Mortavia Fountain, the Forest of Jigramunt, the Cave of Jigramunt, and Cordova Town. Most of the rest is too sad, too silly, or too harsh and dissonant for my tastes.

Free Giveaway Ending Soon!

Posted on Posted in Cool Websites, Covers, Freebie, Jaiya, Marketing, Marrying A Monster, Mel Dunay, Paranormal RomanceLeave a comment

I’m giving away an abridged sample chapter of my new Paranormal Romance, Marrying A Monster, on Instafreebie, right now. This is the second-to-last day of the giveaway, so grab it while you can. Just click here, and if you are not already an Instafreebie member, go through the steps to sign up.

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Marrying A Monster featured on Digital Book Spot

Posted on Posted in Cool Websites, Freebie, Jaiya, Marketing, Marrying A Monster, Mel Dunay, Paranormal Romance, Publishing PlansLeave a comment

Sometime back, I booked a spot for Marrying A Monster on Digital Book Spot, a website which publicizes free and $0.99 e-books. I found it to be a very user-friendly and easy to read website, with lots of books that looked interesting, in every genre from thriller to romance. Click here to check the site out!

The Shape of Things To Come

Posted on Posted in Editing, Fantasy, Gladiator, Jaiya, Marrying A Monster, Mel Dunay, MMA Fighter, NaNoWriMo, Paranormal Romance, Steampunk, Writing2 Comments

Now that you’ve “met” Marrying A Monster, maybe it’s time for me to share a little more about the rest of the Jaiya series.

The main Jaiya series is currently three books long, and is set in “present day” Jaiya, or at least a timeframe where the technology and social developments are similar to our present day. I have some ideas for short stories or novellas about these characters, and if I come up with any more 50K-length stories in this setting, that grab me, I will write them.

Marrying A Monster is of course the first book in the series. The second book is currently titled Waking the Dreamlost, which was my Summer 2017 writing project. Monster‘s hero, Vipin, has an older brother named Marish, who is the hero of Dreamlost. I will probably spend the rest of October revising Dreamlost, along with some time in November if I finish with NaNoWriMo2016 early, and however much time it takes after that. The hope is to have it ready to go by before December 15.

Loving A Deathseer is the third book in the series in internal chronology, but the first one written. (How that happened is a story for another time.) The heroine is a relative of Vipin’s and Marish’s. This one is going to need a lot more reworking than Dreamlost, so there isn’t a timeframe for release yet.

There is also a Jaiya prequel series in the works. At this point, the only thing written is last year’s NaNoWriMo project, a fantasy romance with a gladiator/MMA fighter angle set 200+ years before Marrying A Monster. I am currently outlining a book about Vipin’s parents, which I hope to do for NaNoWriMo this year.

I also have a very rough idea for a book about Vipin’s grandparents, which I will try to write in the first quarter of next year. And there’s an even sketchier concept for a steampunk-y paranormal romance set about 75 years after the gladiator romance, and about 150 yrs before Marrying A Monster. The steampunk romance and the gladiator romance would both deal with Vipin’s ancestors. The series would start releasing sometime in 2017, barring complications.