Win a Kindle Paperwhite with The Artists Trilogy 99 cent giveaway!

Hey, so to kick off The Artists Tril­ogy going from indie-published to traditionally-published, Natasha is a Book Junkie is host­ing one fan­tas­tic give­away (also a great rea­son to snap up Sins & Nee­dles and On Every Street for just 99 cents). This only runs till June 4th, the date that Hachette takes over, so get on it while you can!

Click here to enter: http://www.natashaisabookjunkie.com/2013/05/31/giveaway-the-artists-trilogy/

Stupendous Novella Giveaway!

In prepa­ra­tion for the upcom­ing Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror book, Come Alive (#7) on June 23rd, I thought I would do a give­away. Cuz, hello, more Dex com­ing at you!

You can win a signed copy of the novel­las And With Mad­ness Comes the Light AND On Every Street (from The Artists Tril­ogy), plus two magnets.

The con­test is open inter­na­tion­ally and will run until Fri­day May 31st!

TO ENTER you must pro­vide your favorite Dex quote below. If you do not have one, please tell me why you’d like to get to know Dex Foray. Com­ments are being mod­er­ated because of sneaky spam, so your com­ment won’t show up right away but I’ll still be able to see it, so don’t worry.

Good luck!

********ONCE AGAINTO ENTER YOU MUST PROVIDE YOUR FAVORITE DEX QUOTEOR IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE SERIES YET (AND YOU SHOULD GET ON THAT, btw) — TELL ME WHY YOU’D LIKE TO GET TO KNOW DEX FORAY. If you just thank me for the give­away, it’s not enough. You must com­ment on one of those two spe­cific things. Put your ass into it, you know? Thank you! *************

I’m not an asshole, I swear

Here’s the thing. I’m pretty good about let­ting some things slide — you kinda have to be when you’re a writer. I mean, hello, just look at any bad review. If some­one doesn’t like what you’ve writ­ten, there’s lit­tle you can do you change their mind. So let it go (eas­ier said than done, of course, but I’ve had practice).

But, when peo­ple have the wrong infor­ma­tion or the wrong idea about some­thing, well that’s a dif­fer­ent story. I have to put things right.

Ever since I announced that Grand Cen­tral Pub­lish­ing was push­ing back the release date of Shoot­ing Scars to August 20th, I’ve got­ten a hell of a lot of back­lash. This was to be expected  - in fact I voiced this con­cern to my edi­tor and she under­stood. But this was their deci­sion, not mine and I stand by them because I believe they know what they’re doing (read to the end to find out what that is) and HELL they are MY pub­lish­ers. This is my dream! Of course, they don’t deal with the backlash…I do.

And, frankly, in some cases like on Face­book or Goodreads, it’s been a bit…harsh. Like, you want to hurt me kind of harsh (and I am a fairly del­i­cate flower, so…)

Look, I under­stand being dis­ap­pointed. I’M dis­ap­pointed. I’m used to the “press pub­lish” method of self-publishing just as you’re all used to “one-click” buy­ing. I’m used to fin­ish­ing a book, edit­ing it, pub­lish­ing it. I’m a very fast writer and a very fast pub­lisher and I like to get things out to you as soon as pos­si­ble (hence why I’ve pub­lished thir­teen books in two years). But, this isn’t how the real pub­lish­ers do things. They take their time (and this is a good thing).

So you can be dis­ap­pointed all you want and I’m right there with you. I GET IT! You can cry and scream and be sad about the book being pushed back and I’ll cry and be sad, too. Honestly.

But, and here’s where things get tricky; I’ve noticed some peo­ple get­ting really angry and some false infor­ma­tion about me going around. Most notably, that I’m in charge of Shoot­ing Scars release date, that I some­how have the power over the dates and that it’s my fault the book is pushed back– in short, I’m doing this on purpose.

I am not an ass­hole. I swear.

I like to think of myself as a fairly engag­ing and gen­er­ous author. Aside from try­ing to pub­lish a lot of books for peo­ple to enjoy, I also host a looooooot of give­aways. I try and answer all my emails. I pro­vide teasers. I give away ARCs (essen­tially FREE books) to a boat­load of peo­ple and not all of them blog­gers. Some of them just ordi­nary peo­ple who love to read.

I try and keep peo­ple happy because read­ers are my every­thing. So it breaks my heart when peo­ple get the idea that I’m doing this to piss peo­ple off or to just fuck with peo­ple or I don’t care about my read­ers or I don’t know what.

Does that sound like some­thing I would do? Look, I’ve pushed back release dates on my self-published books before and I’ve admit­ted it. I said “hey you know what, Come Alive is going to be pub­lished in June because I’m bump­ing up Shoot­ing Scars till May.” I got some back­lash on that too, but at least that was fair — I was in charge of the dates. It was in my con­trol. That’s what self-publishing is all about.

But Shoot­ing Scars is NOT a self-published book. The Artists Tril­ogy, start­ing June when GCP For­ever releases it under their name, is no longer self-published. It started out that way but was bought by a big ass big six pub­lisher (see: my dream), some­thing I always wanted for this series. Now my series can go beyond the 30K peo­ple who have bought a copy (thank you!) and now hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple might get hooked on the Ellie/Camden/Javier train through Grand Cen­tral Publishing’s skilled hands. They can reach faaaaar more peo­ple than I ever could on my own.

Because it is not self-published, I do not con­trol the release dates. I am just the writer. AND I LIKE IT. It’s fuck­ing NICE to be able to just write and not worry about any­thing (except piss­ing off peo­ple, appar­ently). I don’t have to man­age the release, I don’t have to plan the pub­lic­ity attack. I don’t have to find an edi­tor and a cover and for­mat the book. They do it all for me. That is the num­ber one draw of going with a pub­lisher (that and see­ing your book in book­stores everywhere).

I’m excited!

I just wish my read­ers were excited too. I know push­ing back the release dates have made the excite­ment lev­els drop and I hope to bal­ance them out with more give­aways and post­ing whole chap­ters and more teasers closer to the release date. I know it’s tough to wait for a book. In fact, if I could go back in time I would have stuck to the orig­i­nal release date for Shoot­ing Scars, which was July. Yup. I was first going to pub­lish it in July, but then I saw so many peo­ple upset over the cliffhanger and bumped it up to May. I hate dis­ap­point­ing peo­ple, but what can you do…

I hope that cleared things up, or at least made you real­ize I am not doing this, it is out of my hands. My read­ers mean every­thing to me (as I blogged about before, the rea­son I went with Grand Cen­tral Pub­lish­ing is because the release date for SS was going to be in the sum­mer and the third book would be pub­lished in 2013 as well.…most other pub­lish­ers would spread the series out more and push it back by a year — I was not going to sign any deal that would do that). I would never push­back the release date if I could help it.

Now, I must go back to writ­ing Shoot­ing Scars. Since I signed the deal, the dead­line got extended by two weeks so I’m still plow­ing through it.

**** For those inter­ested in the pub­lish­ing process, here’s why the real rea­son why the release got pushed back *****

Pub­lish­ing houses have a sched­ule of books to be released. This sched­ule is usu­ally made a YEAR in advance, at least. Remem­ber, self-published books going to tra­di­tional is a VERY new thing. Nor­mally, books are cho­sen through agents. The agent sub­mits the author’s work to the edi­tors, they look it over, and if they like it, they make a deal. The book then goes through a VERY long edit­ing process and a very long cover process and a very long mar­ket­ing cam­paign. Mary Sue’s book “Vam­pire boyfriend” would be sub­mit­ted to the pub­lish­ers and a year or two later the book would finally come out. You know how they work…look at any trilo­gies, like Diver­gent. Roth signed the deal for those books at least a year before they were pub­lished. And all the book releases are spaced a year apart.

Pub­lish­ing houses are slooooooow.

So let’s look at GCP. They prob­a­bly have a sched­ule all set for book releases this year. They can’t all release their books on the same days (always a Tues­day) because they won’t be able to donate as much mar­ket­ing time. They want every book to have their moment in the sun. So they space them out — this thriller here, this romance there. It’s been set like that at least a year in advance (remem­ber the major­ity of the books are tra­di­tion­ally pub­lished and are still going through the stages).

Then I come along. They want my books. They want to sell Sins and OES and mar­ket them. Nor­mally, a pub­lish­ing house would say “okay, let’s release Sins in June and then OES over Christ­mas. THEN Shoot­ing Scars the fol­low­ing June and since we are feel­ing gen­er­ous, the third book in Xmas 2014″- they want to donate as MUCH time as pos­si­ble into mar­ket­ing the shit out of Sins before the release the other books. Remem­ber, I’ve sold X amount already — they need to make their pur­chase of the books worth­while. They need to reach peo­ple too.

But GCP, god bless them, said, “Hey we’ll release Sins and OES in June, and then spend June and July mar­ket­ing them, then release Shoot­ing Scars in July and then book#3 in Octo­ber.” And then they are like SHIT…we have SO many books lined up for July, that it wouldn’t be fair for Mary Sue’s “Vam­pire Boyfriend” a book that’s been made ready for a year, to sud­denly get the shaft. We’ve devoted so much time and money to it already.

So then they say, okay, well if we won’t move Vam­pire Boyfriend, then we’ll move Shoot­ing Scars since we just bought it. It’s just a month. Peo­ple will under­stand. And that way, instead of try­ing to mar­ket both those books at the same time, we can give Vam­pire Boyfriend the spot­light and then the next month do the same for Shoot­ing Scars.

And that’s what hap­pened. Shoot­ing Scars got moved to August 20th because it was the bet­ter date for both them and I. Book #3 got moved to Octo­ber 15th for the same reason.

There was no spite here. Noth­ing mali­cious. It’s just the way they work and it’s 100% out of my con­trol. I am a new-ish author with a mod­est (by their stan­dards) amount of suc­cess who has never had a pub­lish­ing deal before. They are a big pub­lish­ing cor­po­ra­tion who have been doing this for decades. I trust them.

And I hope you trust me.

<3

 

 

The Artists Trilogy — Publication Dates 2013 + new cover

First, let’s get the bad news out of the way.

I know I said Shoot­ing Scars was com­ing out in July, but it just got pushed back to August 20th. Why? Grand Cen­tral Publishing’s team felt they could do me and the book bet­ter jus­tice this way and donate more man­power to pub­lic­ity. It’s a pretty good rea­son that I think will ben­e­fit every­one in the end.

They know that you, the read­ers, will be dis­ap­pointed by this news and they want to appease you (and me!). I will be work­ing with GCP’s pub­lic­ity depart­ment to come up with some treats for you — maybe along the lines of post­ing the first chap­ter to soften that Sins cliffhanger blow? Maybe giv­ing away THREE Cam­den bracelets in this blog post? Well, that’s not a maybe…I’m going to per­son­ally do it, so keep read­ing to enter.

So there you go. August 20th is the offi­cial release date of Shoot­ing Scars (will be on Nook as well as Ama­zon and all the major e-retailers at the same time).

Book #3 Bold Tricks (work­ing title) is being released on Octo­ber 15th. Hey, just a two-month wait!

Sins & Nee­dles and On Every Street will both be taken over by the pub­lish­ers next month in early June. This ALSO means that On Every Street will finally be avail­able on Nook at that time.

Once again, I’m sorry to dis­ap­point you with this push­back but there’s obvi­ously very lit­tle that I can do about it. The pub­lish­ers said they’d try to get it pub­lished in July but some­times things don’t work out and they are try­ing to get things to work in my favor.

So, please, keep that in mind. It actu­ally hurts my soul to see read­ers being upset with me over this or upset in gen­eral. Your sup­port for me and my new pub­lish­ers is MUCH appreciated.

Mean­while, here’s the NEW cover for Sins & Needles.

Yup! It’s pretty much the same, except white font and my name is ridicu­lously big. So happy they kept the cover, I love it!

Have you missed all the teasers I’ve posted about Shoot­ing Scars so far? Take a look:

Back to the first “I want to make you happy” give­away. Three Cam­den bracelets here. I just got them today and am really happy with them!

The win­ners will receive one of these as well as a signed sur­prise goody! To enter, just leave a com­ment below and on May 14th (the date I hand in Shoot­ing Scars to my edi­tor!) and I’ll pick three win­ners. Open internationally!