Kim Cleary's Blog

Here is my review of Protect and Obey which I read last night.

Protect and Obey by Jen Katemi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don’t often read steamy romance. But when I do, I turn to my favourite steamy romance author Jen Katemi. Somehow she mixes lots of sex (LOTS!) with a great story, well-rounded characters and a light sensual touch. In the Rich and Royal series she has really nailed steamy romance with depth, and plot that has you wanting to turn the pages. It’s a short and thoroughly enjoyable read. This book makes sense as a standalone, but I think it’s richer if you read the 1st story in the book as well as it makes Dav’s redemption even sweeter.

I’m looking forward to the 3rd book in the series, which will focus on Isabella, the sister of the trio. I’ve no doubt it will be a fabulous read too! Highly recommended for lovers of romance and happy endings.

If you enjoy steamy romance, you can find more of Jen’s books here


View all my reviews

The post Review of Protect and Obey by Jen Katemi appeared first on Author Kim Cleary.

I recently finished book three in my Daughter of Ravenswood new adult urban fantasy series. To celebrate, I’m relaunching the the first two books with a fabulous set of brand-new, new adult urban fantasy covers.

I love them!

It’s been hard not to share them sooner, but you know how it is… busy, busy, busy.

Available now, for preorder on Amazon.

If you have already fallen in love with Meagan’s Dragon Aymon, you can see him on each cover. Even though he doesn’t appear in the third book Fate Uncertain, you just know he’s hovering in the background in case Meagan needs him!

If you love these covers too, you can find my cover designer at Charmaine Ross Design

If you’d like to read about how I achieved the title USA Today Best Selling Author with my novel Fate Uncertain, you can read all about it here.

Now available for pre-order on Amazon

The post Fabulous New Adult Urban Fantasy Series appeared first on Author Kim Cleary.

Note: This set is no longer available, but my story soon will be!

I wasn’t chasing any accolades. Definitely not that of a USA Today Best Selling Author, when I applied to be included in an urban fantasy box set.

I saw the box set advertised in one of my writing groups. At the time, I was halfway through a standalone novella in my Daughter of Ravenswood series. The box set looked like a perfect match as its theme was kick-ass heroines in an urban fantasy story.

I’d noticed quite a few of my writing friends participated in box sets with varying results. All benefited from exposure to a brand-new set of readers. All the author participants shared the box-set to their newsletter lists during the pre-order period and launch week. I liked the idea of collaboration with a bunch of other authors in my genre, as well as gaining visibility. It’s the hardest thing to achieve in this game!

Application and fingers crossed!

I applied for inclusion, and was accepted. Along with twenty-one other urban fantasy authors, many of them multiple bestsellers and award winners!

Every box set has a buy-in price. They range from $50 upwards, and the money is spent on covers, blurbs, and of course oodles of advertising. Obviously the bigger the buy in, the more you expect back. This one ended up with a buy in price of $500. Yes. A considerable sum of money. However it offered me a number of benefits:

a big marketing learning curve,
collaboration with the other participants,
the increased visibility I was looking for,
and after a few weeks discussion, a decision to try to make enough sales to hit the USA Today bestseller list.

Funnily enough, I was quite blasé about that decision. It didn’t seem particularly relevant to me. Things changed over time… But we will get to that later.

The steps to sell enough copies to hit the USA Today Best Selling Author list

Disclaimer: This is the only box set I’ve been in, so it’s the only experience to base my feelings on. The rest of this post is a quick summary of what I learned in this exercise. (I’m going to pretty much ignore the impact of Pronoun closing down, as it created a number of abnormal issues)

The activity fell into roughly 3 periods:

Writing and editing
Preorder promotion
Launch week

Writing and Editing Phase

Now available for pre-order on Amazon

As our professionalism had been assessed prior to inclusion, we were each accountable for our own writing and editing. (This is normal for a box set and means if you are considering doing this you need to allow for the cost of editing in addition to the buy-in price) I had to finish my story, get a cover organised, and get through two rounds of editing.

Luckily we had an experienced publisher and a number of experienced participants. So during this phase we also did a lot of work on setting up a Google Drive of shared documents, organising rafflecopter and other promotions and preparing advertising materials. (A number of people in the group were fabulous at creating images and writing tags/blurbs but we all contributed in various ways)

This is probably the phase in which I learned the most. Particularly around setting up great giveaways, running effective Facebook parties, and writing great ad copy.

Because we were targeting to hit a list rather than make long-term sales we had a six-month preorder period and concentrated our ad spending on getting those preorders.

Preorder Promotion

While the ad spend was widespread, $wise we focused on Bookbub, Facebook and AMS. The publisher took care of this, we the authors concentrated on our own newsletters, getting newsletter swaps, promoting in relevant Facebook groups and promoting the giveaways everywhere. We also ran an author incentive to find extra authors to do newsletter swaps with.

Yes. A huge amount of work. In fact it was a real eye-opener for me, on just how much work (and how much money) is required to get sales.

A few points became very clear:

An engaged newsletter list is critical. Small and engaged is better than large, where half the list don’t even open your emails.
Good collaboration with authors in the same genre is critical.
Readers respond to attractively packaged giveaways.
By far the majority of sales are on Amazon. But to get onto the list, you have to achieve at least five hundred sales on each of three platforms. (usually Amazon, nook and iTunes) You must pay attention to getting sales on Nook and iTunes, both of which require significantly more work than Amazon, to find readers and get traction with advertising and giveaways.

Launch week

Launch week for us came almost 2 months earlier than we had planned, thanks to the closure of Pronoun. As you can imagine this created a huge amount of stress. Both for authors who were still completing their stories, and for all of us who thought we had another two months of promotion. Let’s ignore all of that extra stress… The main complication was that the closure of pronoun affected a lot of box-sets and single releases. It meant that all of the affected authors would be releasing in the same week.

Normally you would expect to get onto the USA Today bestselling list with sales of 5000 in your launch week. (Three to four times this number to get onto the New York Times list, but that one isn’t based just on sales) With all of the extra release activity, we had no idea how many we would need, but 5000 probably wasn’t going to cut it.

We really had to fight to get the 500 sales on iTunes, luckily we had a couple of people familiar with the platform and with the groups of readers most responsive to advertising. If not for their efforts we would not have reached the number of sales required.

Who needs sleep??

We had seven days to sell, sell, sell. We all promoted on our own Facebook pages, tweeted like crazy, promoted in Facebook groups and made sure our organised newsletter swaps went smoothly. Some of this activity also costs money – small amounts for boosting a post, hosting a giveaway, providing Amazon gift cards and/or copies of e-books, that sort of thing. Anyone considering joining a box set to hit a list needs to be prepared to spend over the cost of the buy-in.

By the end of the week, I wanted that accolade! I was a total nervous Nelly waiting for the numbers to come out.

USA Today Bestselling Author

We did it!

On final count we sold a little under 7000 box sets, only slightly over 500 on each of Nook and iTunes – no matter, it was enough to get counted.

I hadn’t started out chasing any accolades, and definitely not that of a USA Today Best Selling Author. But the numbers came through: we had achieved 119 in the bestseller list for that week! I danced around the house with a grin that made my face ache.

Was it worth it?

Huge amount of effort.

Considerable cost.

Will get some return on investment. (But not 100% as we didn’t set up to keep our ranking high and keep sales sticky)

Do readers care and purchase books with the accolade “USA Today Best Selling Author” rather than someone else’s? It’s debatable isn’t it. It’s just another tool, another talking point in your armoury.

It does look fabulous on your covers though

Another brain stretching topic this week! Which five authors I’d like to meet …

I mostly write fiction with a speculative element, but my reading habits are eclectic. With a quick browse through my bookshelves, I find more historical novels than anything else.

I studied history through high school and through University. It’s always been a favourite topic of mine, from ancient Egypt, through to medieval and Victorian times. I enjoy the historical research I do for my own novels. Now I’m mulling over which five authors I’d like to meet, I’m gravitating towards authors who wrote in or about our history.

The Five Authors I’d Like to Meet
440px-Ellis_Peters

Ellis Peters is first on my list, simply because her books are set in the twelfth century. She is famous for her Brother Cadfael series which started in 1977 with A Morbid Taste for Bones.

I’ve read the series right through several times, and it never fails to delight me. Ellis Peters weaves historical detail and a murder mystery, and usually a touch of romance in each story. Brother Cadfael is a fabulous protagonist, world-weary but still interested in everything and up for anything.

Portrait of Pepys by John Hayls

Next is an author I’ve read piecemeal over the years. Samuel Pepys is the famous UK diarist who kept a detailed journal from 1660 to 1669. These were tumultuous times, Oliver Cromwell was not long dead, and the country in disarray. Pepys recorded his daily life in minute detail and touched on momentous events in history such as the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London.

Portrait of Austen (c. 1810) by her sister, Cassandra

Jane Austen is the third author I’d like to meet. She lived and set her novels at the end of the 18th century among the British landed gentry.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read Pride and Prejudice. It has become probably her most well known novel, with film versions, translations, sequels and numerous adaptions.

It’s heroine Elizabeth Bennet is one of the most charming and loved heroines in all literature. The hero Mr Darcy has become a model for romantic and sexy heroes ever since.

I’m struggling to find CC images of my next two authors, so I’m including a picture of just a small sample from my bookshelf. I bought these in the old days, well before e-readers came along!

My next choice is Elizabeth Peters. I absolutely love her Amelia Peabody series! Set in late Victorian times and featuring Amelia Peabody and her Egyptologist husband Emerson.

Crocodile on the Sandbank is the first story and Amelia is a fabulous character. Strong-minded, independent, funny and sarcastic, she ignores her restrictive skirts and strides around Victorian Egypt on a mission. There is always a mystery, usually a few dead bodies, but it’s Amelia – and her witty relationship with Emerson – who drives the story forward.

I discovered the fifth author, Deanna Raybourne, by accident. I was tired of paranormal and felt like something completely different. Happily I found the Lady Julia Grey series. Silent in the Grave is the first book in the series. I love the mix of historical fiction, mystery, with a twist of love story. This series has a much stronger romance than I normally read, but I still enjoyed the series. Julia Grey is intelligent, sometimes idiotic and impulsive, and beautifully and believably created. All of the characters are beautifully drawn and the late Victorian settings are lushly described.

I’m looking forward to seeing the authors everyone else has picked, and you can read about them here.

The post Five authors I’d like to meet appeared first on Author Kim Cleary.

This week’s topic is a book that influenced me. Had to think about that one for a little while. I’ve read a lot of books, and many influenced me, my opinions, thinking and behaviour.

But looking back, one book did spring to mind rather quickly. Perhaps because it sparked so much discussion!

Betty Frieden wrote The Feminine Mystique in 1963. By the time I read it at university, it was already two decades old and as much criticised as praised.

The book changed my thinking about feminism. I already knew feminism had made a positive difference in the world. The Feminine Mystique showed how far we had to go in achieving real equality. It articulated that feminism could, and should, be both pragmatic and noble. It spoke to me in language I understood, perhaps because I was becoming an educated white, middle-class feminist myself. And also because I knew so many women, my friend’s mothers and others, who fit right into the group of women Ms Friedan was writing about.

Now, while I still appreciate how groundbreaking it was in its day, I tend to notice the book’s flaws.

It focuses on the 1950’s and 1960’s dilemma for educated, middle-class married white women in America. Housewives who were bored with a narrow focus on their home, and children, and with too much leisure time, who wanted more out of life. It’s interesting, from a historical perspective, that this post war period took several conservative steps backwards from the 1930’s and 40’s when women joined the workforce in droves.

Ms Friedan totally ignored unmarried women, women without children, non-white women and poor white women who had to work to stay alive. At no point in the book does she discuss the impact of sexism and sexist oppression on the lives of all women in American society. But, the success of the book (over 3 million copies sold) led to many other authors picking up on these omissions, and to discussion and debate that busted way beyond academia.

She also completely ignored the rights of the LGBTQ community, in fact many writers coming after her argued that the book is disturbingly homophobic.

But in this post I’m talking about a book that influenced me, and this one did. It made me realise that women unknowingly pin themselves (and other women) into pigeonholes. Even more so, I understood that men could be just as much victims of sexism as women.

The book isn’t perfect. It’s outdated, repetitive, rather dry at points, and a number of scholars have questioned her scientific research. But I do believe it was one of the primary levers of change back in the sixties. It is credited with starting the Second-wave Feminism movement. A movement which eventually worked with civil rights and students unions and succeeded in changing beliefs and opinions around the world.

This is week 5 in the MFRW 52 week challenge! You can read about the books that influenced other authors in the hop by clicking here.

 

The post A Controversial Book that Influenced Me appeared first on Author Kim Cleary.

Week four in the MFRW fifty-two week blog challenge posts an interesting question. What would I do with myself, if I couldn’t be a writer?

I’ve written elsewhere about my journey from sales and marketing in a large corporation to writer of fiction and non-fiction; from large corporate teams to working pretty much by myself. Chronic pain in my hands makes any typing painful, and impossible after several minutes without a break. Constant fatigue and brain fog make it difficult to focus and concentrate. Some might think writing a poor career choice under the circumstances!

How much of myself is in my writing? That’s the question for week three in the MFRW 52 week blog challenge. I can’t keep myself out, I’ve never tried to and the truth is, I don’t want to. I’m in my writing, and I’m happy about it

Memory is an interesting topic isn’t it. We all have memories, whether they are scraps of sounds, smells and emotion, or full on movie scenes playing in our heads.

This the second post in a 52 week blog challenge I have, somewhat rashly, signed up for.

My track record with regular blogging is rather hit and miss

The favourite thing I’ve written, is always the thing I’m writing right now!

It’s the story that’s in my head. It interrupts my thoughts at odd and unpredictable moments. The characters swirl in my head in that fuzzy stage just before you fall asleep, and the story plays like a movie, scene by scene in my brain. It ‘s the story that distracts me while I’m cooking, and sometimes thorough a conversation (usually leaving my husband shaking his head).

I can work on more that one story at once, but they have to be at different stages. I might be drafting a new story, editing an older one, and researching for a new idea all at the same time. It’s the story I’m drafting that usually wears the halo of favouritism.

My current favourite is a new series I’ve started. It’s a romantic suspense with paranormal elements. Or perhaps it’s more of a paranormal suspense with romantic elements. Or, come to think of it, a cosy mystery with paranormal and romantic elements! It’s about a group of women from 22 years to 60 years old who all share a link to magic and witchcraft. Of course each story features a murder and a bit of romance…

It’s a huge shift for me as I normally write dark urban fantasy ( It was my favourite at the time

I often read the Positive Writer blog by Bryan Hutchinson – a recent one got me thinking. Bryan listed 40 reasons why he chooses to write, and challenged his readers to do the same. I’m not sure I can come up with 40 reasons! But the Positive Writer blog is all about positivity – so let’s jump right in and give it a go