What. A. Ride.

It's the end of the year. No, really. It's the end of the line for 2014 in like eight hours from my little part of the world. For some of you it's already 2015 but I can't let this amazing year go out without saying some very important words to some very important people.

Linda Russell - You got me started on this crazy ride when I handed you the first few pages of my stupid little story and you... said, "Write more. I want to see where this goes." Thank you for the encouragement. Because off you I had the courage to hit the publish button on my first novel and, well, domino effect. For sure.

Tracie Warren - For picking up the torch and fucking running with it like a madwoman. Mostly for editing all of my stories and being my personal one woman cheer squad, therapist, sounding board and for every other thing you do because let's face it, they are just too numerous to list all of them here. Thank you. I love you with all my butt. I would say heart but my butt is way bigger.

Clarissa Yeo - For all of the fantastic cover art, for branching out into new arenas and creating the logo for the SHMC even though you really, really didn't want to. You put up with my particulars, let me swamp you with work and you keep taking on more and more stuff for me despite how crazy busy you are. Thank you for sticking with my crazy.

Liar Reese - For formatting my SHMC books for print but more importantly for not being afraid to point out flaws and ship them back to me until I get them right before you put them in to print. For the business cards, teaching me new tech and being patient through the gazillion questions I level at you just about every day of the week. Rock on sister. Rock on. Thank you so much for all of the last minute this that and the other and for keeping up with it all.

Michelle Bigioni Slagan - For scheduling shit for me so I can keep writing. You have no idea how much weight you slid off my shoulders by leading the charge on creating a street team and by taking on answering messages and talking to blogs and all manner of rather important stuff so that I can be anti-social and keep my fingers on the keys. Thanks for that in a big damned way.

Jennifer Mitsada - Holy shit. Where do I start? You jumped into the street team with both feet, went nuts making all manner of teasers and shouting my name from the rooftops and now you're my golden beta reader. I don't even... Yeah. Words. I has none. Thank you so, so much for all of your hard work and enthusiasm.

Paula Simoes Batista - For your amazing book trailers and for bringing Reaver and Hayden to life. More importantly for being willing to do it again for Squick. Thank you.

For the rest of the enterprising women of A.J.'s Sacred Circle, my street team - Sherelle, Melanie, Hossler, Jaclyn, Deanna, and if I've missed your name please, please, please don't be mad at me! There's like 15 of you and some of you are really, really quiet! I THANK YOU. For all of your enthusiasm and plotting and planning and helping me do good things.

2015 is looking to be a very bright year for all of us!

Finally, to all of my readers. For buying the books, for liking the books and for sticking with the series even when it gets dark and more than slightly out side your comfort zones. Thank you for reading, thank you for buying and thank you for making my dream of becoming a real life author a reality in the year 2014 and in in the upcoming year of 2015. I'm looking forward to continuing this crazy ride with all of you with more books, more novellas and for taking you on some other adventures a little less MC and a little more fantastical in the coming year.

Much love, and a safe and happy New Year,
A.J.

Another Monday - Another Update!

So last week has probably been the most disastrous and unproductive week thus far since I started this little writing adventure. Mostly because I hurt myself in a grand way on Thanksgiving which required me to see a doctor from all the pain I was in on Tuesday which put me on Vicodin for the rest of the week.

Seriously. Drugs are bad. Mmmkay? Only thing worse than drugs is trying to write while on them which was so not happening.

I was in such bad shape, I had to stay home from my day job on both Wednesday and Thursday because of it. Can I just say ewe?

I tried valiantly to keep up and get things accomplished in other spheres while down for the count and realizing that I couldn't do any of it, partially from a lack of the proper tools and partially because of a realization that if I continued to attempt to handle it all myself you guys would never get another book again... On Sunday, I reached my limit and tearfully began typing and begging for help...

Oh my fucking God. I was completely overwhelmed by the outpouring of support and the people willing to jump up, jump in and create a street team for me thereby allowing me to get back to doing what I do best - writing books.

I am incredibly grateful to everyone who formed A.J.'s Sacred Circle (A play on both The Sacred Hearts MC and my imprint of Second Circle Press) my very own street team out to spread the word about my books and to keep my social calendar much less messy while I work my ass off on writing this series and other projects that are coming down the line.

I got in a nasty fight with some dirty pirates this week. Some enterprising ass hole had five of my books posted up on a site for free which was soul crushing. Why soul crushing? Because the site gave a convenient little count on how many copies of my book I lost royalties on.

The number of copies was in the thousands between all of the books, predominantly the number of copies lost were of Shattered & Scarred and Broken & Burned though. To say the least, I was not pleased. Not. At. All. They got one hell of a nasty-gram from me and my books were down in less than 24hrs, but still. Damage done.

I don't have much to report on the print side of things. Lia has been hard at work on the internals for the first three books and so there isn't much to show you visually but she assures me that the print covers for books 1 and 3 will be underway and finished by the end of the week, maybe next barring any catastrophes.

This week I have a lot going on. For a lot of people out there wondering why I don't do giveaways of any electronic copies of my books. It's sadly because I don't have the technology... Seriously.
I work and write all my books exclusively on a Surface RT. It's amazing, and I love it, however, in order to format my books in a .mobi or .epub format, all roads lead to Calibre... which is a program you have to download and install and guess what?

The Surface RT is not a Surface Pro 3 and it wants an app for that! There is no app. I need a computer. I have a sad and sorry desktop at home which is in need of a physical and mental evaluation and checkup. It goes to the computer doctor tonight. When I get it back, I should be able to get the whole file extension thing sorted hopefully if not by the end of this week, then by the end of next week.

You'll know when that's accomplished, trust me. So please be patient and I promise to sort things with my street team and put out the word when some copies can be freed up.

This week I hope to get back to finishing book 5 of the SHMC series. It's going to take weeks for book 4 to go through the editing process and that's okay. The big news of the week is really that CRACKED & CRUSHED GOES LIVE TOMORROW!!!

Can you believe it!? Reaver's story is finally here!

Doesn't mean I get to stop, or catch my breath. Nope, all it means is that I will be eagerly skulking in the background like a nervous parent to see what you think of my latest brain child. I hope you like it. Not even going to lie. I'm scared.

This has been one exceedingly long Monday Update, so I am going to quit while I am ahead. If you have any questions, ask 'em! I'll be happy to answer them as soon as I can. I love talking to you guys.

Until later!

Monday Update & My FB presence.

I've been somewhat neglecting the blog as of late and truthfully, that's because I maintain a much bigger Facebook presence these days. I will try to be better about this. I'm sorry. One of the things I do on my Facebook page is a thing I call Monday Update which recaps everything I did in the previous week and lays out all my plans for the coming week.

They don't always end up matching up perfectly, but it gives folks a pretty good idea of what I am up to when it comes to the books. This Monday Update was no exception so I will now use the magic of copy and paste to fill in all you non-Facebook users who would like to know what's up:

Aaand it's another Monday Update!

Last week was quite productive, the internals for books 1 and 3 of the SHMC series have been completed for the print versions of those books. Book 3.5 has been shipped to the lovely Lia Rees for the same treatment and book 4 has been sent to my editor for it's first round of edits.

I deleted the entire back half of book 5, and by that I mean I only saved Chapte...rs 1-19 of a 32 chapter book. Not to worry though, I have already rewritten up through chapter 21. My goal is to have book 5 finished and to the editor by the time book 4 comes back to me but I am not going to sweat it if I don't quite make that goal.

Because of Lia at freeyourwords.com, starting with book 3.5, the novella that comes between books 3 & 4, I will be able to release the books in paperback simultaneously with the ebook versions.

About my book pricing: Interestingly enough I make about .34 cents less a copy in royalties for the paperback than I do for the ecopy of my books. That being said, with the paperbacks looking to cost around $10.99 a piece, if you buy a paperback of my book, I am not charging you anything for the ecopy. I have set up my kindle matchbook that way on purpose.

I mean it when I say that I am writing these for your entertainment and mine and that it's not about the money. The money is nice, don't get me wrong, but I make sure to put a better quality product out there with what I make. IE: I am dropping a decent bit of coin to make the subsequent novels I write better in quality and I even go back and revisit the ones that have gone before to improve them.

I want you guys to be happy and I try to go a little above and beyond to accomplish that goal.

So what's going on this week?

Well, Lia is hard at work on the back covers for books 1 & 3 of the SHMC series. The proof for book 2 has been sent back in to correct a very minor printing issue with the cover, and hopefully by the end of this week or next I will be ordering proofs for books 1-3 to go over.

Book 4 is at Tracie, my editor's, but this is her finals week so a big shout out and good thoughts and well wishes to Tracie Warren! Kick some ass sister! As soon as she's done with finals she assures me she'll be diving head first into book 4 and won't come up for air until she's done.

I will be working diligently on book 5 and making it mesh with book 4 and book 6, even if it does mean I rip my heart out even more than I already have. Book 4 was extremely difficult to write for me, having to be inside the head of a depressed person who is also the survivor of some pretty heavy violence... yeah. The level of awkward and hurty badness in book 4... well, for all you angst lovers, book 4 is for you. Book 5 is much better on that front and for that I am grateful.

So that's what's up with me for this week. Writing book 5, throwing feedback on the print versions of books 1-3.5 and just generally grinding it out. It's a stressful time of year with the holidays coming up so wish me luck and all and keep an eye out, only a week and a day left before Cracked & Crushed The Sacred Hearts MC Book III and everybody's favorite psycho's story hits those Kindles and Kindle reading apps!

Much love, and if you don't hear from me until next Monday... well you know why!

 

Oh yeah, and for you non-FB users, here's a couple of teasers that have been making the rounds over there for Cracked & Crushed:

 

Until next Monday!!!