Hi, guys!
It’s giveaway time, bitches!
But first, I want to talk a little bit about what brought me to this point.
I’ve talked before about the reason I’m rereleasing The Gem of Meruna (vanity press, not understanding anything anout the publishing world, etc.). Today, I want to talk about the inspiration for the story and the process of fleshing it out from there.
So, this story started out as a dream. I woke one day with visions of a girl with vivid purple eyes venturing through a dangerous forest and riding a massive (several stories tall) pure-white stag. In my dream, she was after a magical Gem that perfectly matched the color of her eyes.
But I didn’t know why.
That part wasn’t in the dream.
Now, since I tend toward the macabre, my conscious mind filled in corrupted animals controlled by a vicious dictator, slaughtering people left and right. That’s enough to motivate someone to want change.
But I needed a reason for Kiluna, specifically, to try to change things.
And that’s where her grandmother’s part of the story came in, with tales of the world before they lived in fear, tales of a magical Gem that could right their world…tales that no one else dared speak.
But Kiluna’s grandmother told her all these beautiful stories, told her that things could be better.
And thus, our heroine and her quest were born.
Of course, the story has blood and action, because my stories always have that. And romance, because I fucking love romance in my books.
But anyway…
This has been a hell of a journey. From start to finish, this book took about 4 months to write, but it’s been years coming back from the nightmare of the vanity press. For so long, I contemplated just shoving it in a dark corner and forgetting that it existed, mainly out of frustration and not knowing my options.
But I’m so glad to finally have this book out on the market in a state that doesn’t embarrass me. The original was woefully under-edited, but now that’s fixed.
It was so difficult to restrain myself during edits though. My style has changed a lot since the original release, and the temptation to make it conform to my new style was definitely there.
But that would have required a near-total rewrite.
Which felt a bit like cheating.
For the sake of not making it so that everyone who bought the original would feel the need to buy the new one to know the new story, I did no story edits. Only grammar/spelling stuff. I cut redundancies and tightened up sentences, but left the story as it was originally intended.
And now, with all the irritations of the vanity press finally behind me, I can move into the new decade with confidence.
And let me tell you, 2020 will be a big year, if I have anything to say about it. Lol.
I’ll be releasing World for the Broken and at least one (maybe two) high fantasy romances.
But for now, the thing that brought you here…
The giveaway winners…
*drum roll*
The winner from Facebook is Erin Brown and from Instagram, we have Taryn Chester. Both will receive a signed hardback copy of The Gem of Meruna along with all the accompanying book swag!
The grand prize winner, receiving swag, a signed hardback copy of The Gem of Meruna, and a signed copy of Annabelle, drawn from my email subscribers, is Rae Watson!
Congratulations to all of you!
I’ll message the winners individually later today (it’s fairly late, I just got off a 12 hour shift, and have to get up early), and I’ll need addresses to ship the prizes to. If I don’t receive a response within three days, I’ll have to choose a different winner.
For everyone else, pre-orders are still open until tomorrow.
Because holy freaking crap, release day is tomorrow!
Keep reading. Keep writing.
Later.