New Cover

When in rains it pours. That seems to be my little one liner for the week. In this case though, it stands true for blog posts! I have a lot going on lately.

I touched a little on the story behind a new cover for A Friendships Love in my last post, but, in true Melanie style, I am going to repeat myself, in detail, just for good measure.

I published A Friendships Love on the 26th of August 2013. It was such an exciting day. I never want to lose the joy I feel when I release a new book. It was so surreal, a dream coming true. One that didn't come without its struggles, but like the saying goes, anything that is hard to do it worth it in the end.

This was my first cover for A Friendships Love. A wonderful reader of mine from wattpad, emailed me one day with a cover for my story Desert Wondering. I loved it, and it went from there with her designing all the covers for the stories i have on wattpad, bar A Settlers Love and the published versions. She is from the Netherlands and one of the first readers of mine to connect with me.

I had it in my head that this was going to be the cover I used. It had everything I never knew I wanted. But when it came down to the crunch, we couldn't find the origin of the lady on the cover. For me to be able to sell my story with this cover, I needed to have some sort of right to it.


So without wanting to accumulate any copyright issues, I had to get a new cover. For some of you, those that know this story, will be familiar with this awesome cover, its been around for over a year now, and sort of been my identity.

I truly love this cover. I have sold many paperback and ebook copies of this one. Melissa, from Eleven Eleven Pixel Productions captured Payton and the story very well. I made her read it on wattpad so she could get a feel for the story, poor lady. 

When it came time for me to get a second cover done, one for A Love of Conviction, the second book in The Settler Series, Melissa was too busy and couldn't take me on. So I turned to a woman I had become friends with from Shoutlines Design, who gladly wanted to help. I presented Rachel with a challenge, though. I wanted her make a cover that would match the first, so they looked like they belonged to the same series. She came up with this, which I hope many of you are, now, familiar with  too (insert winky face here).

As I have spoken of before, this year I am writing the third settler series book, A Settlers Love. I approached Rachel again for a cover for this, and she started making the third cover in the image of the second. Suddenly, the first cover for A Friendships Love from Melissa, just didn't match. So I made the hard decision to redo the first cover yet again! 

While making my decision, I searched the books stores, prowled the Internet, finding that quite a few authors do this. An example of this is, Harry Potter. My son has all those books and almost each one comes from a different cover series. And that is OK. So, Rachel got to work and I am overjoyed at the result. 

I do have all three covers now. Number two is unchanged, but I will release A Settlers Love's one in a few days. I want A Friendships Love to get the coverage that design deserves. To celebrate, I have a thousand words or so that I actually cut, some from A Friendships Love, and some from A Love of Conviction to share with you. It's in William Townshends POV, and I loved having it in the original story, but I wanted the published version to be in one POV. So here you go, a Little snippet I cut, but loved, from our very own Will. 

Snippet, cut from A Friendships Love, and A Love of Conviction

Will turned his head away from the window. The sight of Payton mounting Night and sitting on Charlie’s lap unquestioningly made his heart squeeze.

“They’re close, Will,” Ashley said, watching her brother’s reaction to them. “They live together, like we all did.”

Will just blinked and let his attention be brought back to the fact that his arm was aching and his head hurt, and now he had a throbbing sensation that was taking hold in his chest.

                                                          

The sun had risen more than an hour ago. I could see the colours of the new day streaming in through the window. It was hard to believe that only yesterday I was happily waking up to meet Eliza on the deck. I rolled my aching head over to the door at the sound of someone approaching. I smiled at my old friend.

“Nash, how are you this morning?”

“Tired,” he said, raking his hand though his hair.

I wanted to ask after Eliza and Bree, but didn’t have my thoughts properly aligned until a few hours ago. I was worried. I could sense that something wasn’t right. I thought that maybe they would have come in to see me. I knew Grace was alright, but Payton had her. Did something happen to Eliza that made her not able to look after the little girl?

“What’s wrong?” Nash asked.

“Nothing, well, I was just curious about someone is all.” I watched Nash go over to the window and lean his shoulder against it.

“Maybe I can help. I know it’s been a long time, but we’re friends still.”

“Yes and thank you.” I paused. “Did you happen to see a couple of women out there? They would have short hair, one almost black and the other dark blonde.

“Yeah, they left last night.”

I tried to sit up and look out into the other room, but I winched as both my head and arm sent shooting pains through my body, so I lay back down. “They left, what do you mean?” I growled. I watched as Nash pushed himself away from the window and came to my side.

“I spoke to the dark haired one, lovely blue eyes. Is that the one you mean?” I could only stare at Nash. Eliza was a physical beauty and her eyes were stand-outs. I nodded.

“Yes, they were supposed to stay.”

“There was a lot of confusion last night, but your father told us this morning that she was the one who let him know you were calling for Payton.”

“I was what?”

“You were calling for Payton. We rode here as fast as we could when we heard. Your father wanted to offer both of those women a place to stay, but as I told him, they left last night. The blonde said they were going to work for the laundry.” I lifted an arm and placed it over my eyes.

“You alright, Will?” Nash asked.

“Nash, old friend, I’m going to need your help with a few things I think. Can you help me?”

“Name it, Will.”

“Well then, maybe you should sit down, Nash.” I said. I was going to need help. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get up for awhile, and Nash was my best bet right now.

Cover Reveal

Well, I hope you liked my little snippet, and I hope it gives you some insight into Wills character, and what goes on inside his head. 

Without wasting any more of your time, I would now like to reveal the cover for A Friendships Love. Book One in The Settler Series. The Book that started it all. I hope you all like it as much as I do, because it is here to stay. 

Thanks for reading, let me know what you think.

Mel xx

DOWNLOAD YOUR COPY FOR FREE

Free Book

Free Book


Everybody likes free books, right? I know I do. That's how I found wattpad, and that's how I started sharing my stories, and that, is how I gained the courage to publish. Because my readers on there are awesome!

The first story I was brave enough to share on wattpad, was, A Friendships Love. I worked very hard to get it noticed. I prowled the forums and advertising pages, posting the link to my story as mcorona7, and mingling with both authors and readers alike; hoping that I would gain readers for this story I was writing. I told no one I knew what I was up to, you know, writing fictional love stories set in the 1800's, until, A Friendships Love was in the top ten of the wattpad charts for historical fiction. For some of you, it may mean nothing. But to me, I thought "hmm, I might have something here", and was very, very excited.

When A Friendships Love made it into the top five of the 2012 wattie awards as an Undiscovered Gem, I was stoked. I called my dad and told him that I was writing, and that my work was being noticed, and he said "That's great. Now how are you going to make money out of this?" My father, he was, and still is, a financial adviser, and his mind was always ticking.

I didn't think I would ever make any money from my writing. My mind doesn't work like my dads. Truth be told, I don't keep track of my writing in terms of dollar signs like that. And, before you think I must have loads of money to spare, no, I don't have that luxury. I have a job, five children to take care of and a husband who works very hard. I would love to make writing fictional stories a career. BUT, I am not made of the right stuff to track my every process and wheel and deal my work. So I take it as it comes, and progressively work towards my goal. Let,s just say I am doing bookie stuff everyday. I am quite busy with it now, just not rich.

I do have a plan. I am taking a relaxed, organised approach. Which inevitably has taken me full circle with my first book, A Friendships Love. I started by giving the book away, and we are back at that place again.

A Friendships Love has been for sale on Amazon an Smashwords for ninety nine cents for two years. Yes, I said 99c. A small price to pay for a new authors first work. It was a conscious decision, and I feel it has done fairly well for me. There can be improvements made. I self publish, so this is at my luxury. Actually I am re releasing the cover very soon. I signed off on it today, in fact.

My previous cover designer became too busy, and was moving in a different direction than book covers. So, A Love of Convictions cover artist made that cover to kind of match the first. Then, the same lady has recently made A Settlers Love's cover, and so then, A Friendships Love cover didn't match book two or three, so we changed the first. Now The Settler Series books all match. Did you get all that?

ANYWAY, A Friendships Love is once again being offered for FREE on amazon.com. I made this decision based on the fact that I have a few books out now, and I want people to pick up my work, and give it a go. But this time, there are far fewer typos than the version on wattpad. Actually, even though there are a few...it is my published version and I am proud of it. So, if you have read this post this far, you may actually be interested in trying it out, on me. I hope you do.

Make it count
Mel xx

Treasured Land

Well hello there!
                           As always I am a bit late in announcing this. BUT, I had a very good reason. My son accidentally smashed my tablet with my last blog post draft on it. After that, I went camping and lost my mojo. But here it is, the grand announcement that Treasured Land is finally LIVE! All you have to do is click This link, or the LIVE, and you will go right to the amazon page. YAY

I just uploaded all the necessaries for the paperback, today, so those should be available any day now, as well.

I want to say, that the journey from starting a book, planning out a new adventure, and seeing it through to this point, is quite lengthy and takes a lot from me. I can't speak for all authors, so this only applies for myself when I say this. Once I know a book is live or finished, I have to take a breather. So Treasured Land going live, and then heading out on a camping trip
 right away, was very well played on my behalf. I am not sure it was good for the book as yet, as the momentum was stilted, but I am back now, and slowly catching up.

Treasured Land was fun to write. I got to bring in personal experiences held dear to my heart. From digging for honey filled ant bottoms, to trudging my way through the outback in 45 degree C heat. My love for hiking and exploring hopefully shines through, and these particular scenes were a joy for me to write. I hope, between the pages of this story, you will smell the dry Australian landscape, hear the whisper of heated wind, and take pleasure in a unique adventure of trust, love and loss.

I do feel sad when a story is over. Treasure Land was meant to be a stand alone book, with no intentions of another being written. With the feedback I have already received, I can safely inform you all, that no, I will not be writing a sequel. BUT, I always write in characters that COULD have a spin off if I felt so inclined to write one for them. Releasing Treasured Land, as a stand alone when I did, was a strategical move on my behalf. I knew it was going to take some time for me to finish the third Settler Series book, A Settlers Love, and didn't want to keep people waiting for another book from me.

I plan to write a few stand alones through my writing career, I have already, plus started several series. Some of those are mapped out already. I can't wait to bring you the, Finding My Way series. The first draft of book one called Love and Freedom can be found on wattpad.

So, with that, I am going to say, that, for the week or so since Treasured Land has been live, I have been doing a lot of thinking. Which book to work on next? I have several rough drafts completed, ready for me to delve into, to make them better than what they are. Also, like I already mentioned, I have several stories planned out in which I am very excited to start. I have decided that the only way I am going to move forward though, is to concentrate on writing Ashleigh and Nash's story next, A Settlers Love, my 2014 nanowrimo story. I have over thirty thousand words down for it already, so It's well on It's way.

I Will finish this post by saying just a a few more things.

1- Thank you for buying my new release. I love this story, Treasured Land, and I hope you love it too, enough to leave a review. I am sad that story is over. I am still living out my love for Nathaniel through, Brigid. It takes me a wee bit of time to switch off, and let go. I hope you feel the same way as you read their story.

2- Never give up. the fruits of your labor will be sweet. Trust me. Even if it comes with a bit of bitter. That's what happens when we open ourselves up. Come what may, we take the good with the bad.

3- I hope I can do the third Settler Series book some justice. Ashleigh may be sweet, and Nash may be handsome, but where there is love, there may also be a little bit of war ;)

Make it count
Mel XX