Revisions are so Hard!!

BTW - I'm introducing myself as Beverley Oakley at the Hot Down Under site together with my fabulous 13 fellow authors whose upcoming titles will be released by Pan Macmillan Momentum in November, December and January.

I'm also at Manic Readers discussing managing risk and taking care are school holidays are upon me and so is the pressure to finalise revisions for A Little Deception. (There's also an extract there.)

Anyway, the intrigue is so multi-layered that it's a huge task to stay on top of how much the innocent heroine knows as opposed to the sister-in-law and her lover who've gone to such lengths to blacken her name, as opposed to the heroine and sister-in-law's grasping cousin who's been lured into the scheme with the promise of sexual favours as opposed to the hero who must sort all this out before realising the wife who deceived him into marriage is innocent of all but loving him. (Sigh....)

No, there are no spoilers here. It's all in the intrigue and the sexual tension - and getting it all just right. The book was published in hard cover two years ago but I'd had to cut 15,000 words and a plot tangent  to fulfil the publisher's word count. Now I can add that necessary extra layer.

It should have been on Amazon a week ago and it definitely will have to be before I go camping next week! I've made too many promises and this is one I just have to keep.

Self Publishing Re-releases

The other week, while checking out what my writer friends were doing, I stumbled upon Zee Mondee's blog. Well, that's where I'll be on the 12th, talking about my experiment with self publishing my earlier releases which have reverted to me.

Zee is from Mauritius, that beautiful island to the west of southern Africa. I've never been there but my parents honeymooned there in 1961 before it became a tourist paradise.

Anyway, if you want to pop over there and hear about what I'm doing with Kindle Select, Smashwords and CreateSpace, I'd love to see you.

The following day - September 13th - I'll be blogging over at my old friend, Ivy Truitt's Manic Readers - about Getting My Rights Back and the decisions to be made. Especially with my latest release, A Little Deception, which I'm currently reworking and upping the heat level - as per my readers' requests.

So, hopefully you'll join me...

Hot Down Under Cover Art - and new Amazon release

The first mock-up of proposed cover art in the Hot Down Under erotic short stories has just hit our inboxes with Mel Teshco's 'Under the Light of the Silver Moon'.

Joel Naoum, Momentum's publisher, is asking for input - a refreshing change when as an author one usually has little say.

I had a dream the other night I got the cover art back for Her Gilded Prison, my forthcoming release with Ellora's Cave. The previous evening I'd sent off the Author Art Information in which it makes it quite clear that once the author has provided the essential details to the artist, that's where communication regarding the cover ceases.

Well, my dream was that I received the cover art for my erotic Regency Romance and it featured ... yes, wait for it ... a woman sharing a sleeping bag with three men in the back of a fighter jet.

What turned it from dream to nightmare was 'knowing' that I couldn't change it as the fault 'obviously' lay with me in failing to communicate the essential details.

And now it really is time to wrap up the evening. Mel's cover is looking absolutely fabulous with its Hot Down Under Momentum branding - the red stripe down the side. And I know my Ellora's Cave cover is going to look great too - and be true to the period. (So, no, I'm really not worried.)

I had a great day's teaching Short Story at Vic Uni today, and now I must prepare myself for a busy day editing and preparing to upload to Amazon my previously hard cover Regency Romance, A Little Deception.

It was nominated Favourite Historical Romance in 2011 by ARRA (Australian Romance Readers Association) however now that I have the rights back I'm going to up the heat level. I had so many readers complain that they got left behind at the bedroom door. It was one of the reasons I moved on to writing for Ellora's Cave and Total-E-Bound. However, my neat little experiment is that the hard cover will be for 'your elderly aunt' while 'you' can read the e-book and paperback version with all the heat and steam between hero and heroine which some readers felt was missing.

Then you can discuss the plot surrounding the diamond heist and the dastardly plotting sister-in-law with auntie rather than the heat level. That way, hopefully everyone's happy and I, too, will have had a little extra fun.

So look out for it. It'll be upon Amazon in the next few days.