Zarah Detand's Blog: Zarah's Soap Box

Hi there, for those who are in the mood for a MM friends-to-lovers novella, here you go.

Freebie: This Shifting Ground

Table for two, please!

Mark Mitchell, part-time waiter and full-time law student, doesn’t mind working at a popular dating restaurant. One, the tips are decent, and two, there’s the occasional eye candy seated in his section. When a particular customer catches his attention by means of a stellar pair of dimples and repeat dates playing out at one of Mark’s tables, Mark’s curiosity is peaked.

As it turns out, the name that goes with the dimples is Oliver, and after only just moving to Manchester from a small town, he’s looking for freedom rather than anything serious. Too bad—Mark’s been there, done that, and now he’s in the market for a proper relationship.

They can still be friends, though. Right?


This slow-burn MM romance novella combines fast-paced dialogue with a simmering attraction that blurs the lines of friendship until they cease to exist.

After three days of digging into the details of self-publishing with Amazon, I have come to a shocking conclusion: it’s a science. And I committed just about every mistake in the book.

It all started with a quest: find out why my last two book launches failed so badly. I mean, sure, maybe they’re just bad books. It’s possible. But the small number of reviews that trickled in were positive—it’s just that there weren’t many of them.

(Side note, because this might not be obvious to readers: reviews matter. A lot. On the one hand, it’s incredibly encouraging for me when people connect with my characters, makes it feel like all those hours I spend stuck in my own head, turning scenes and phrases over in my mind, are actually worth it. They also matter because every review increases the chances that another potential reader will sit up and pay attention. Last but not least, reviews influence rankings on Amazon, which increase the chances that people find the book. End side note!)

So I started digging. And boy, did I learn things! About Amazon’s algorithms, its hidden categories and how rankings work, about keywords and finding the right ones, about cover design and crafting more effective book descriptions. And about all the glaring mistakes I made.

There’s undeniable humor in finding out, some six years into self-publishing, that you did it wrong all along.

Let me say this: if you are a self-published author, or are even just thinking about dipping your toes into that particular ocean, a little research goes a long way. Kindlepreneur is an excellent place to start.

I just wish I had realized that sooner.

(Side note #2, clearly related: I was wondering if any of you, my dear Goodreads friends, might be willing to review my next story (M/F) in time for its launch in early May? I’d provide you with a free advance reading copy, of course!

If you think you might be up for that, please leave a comment here or shoot me a message! I’d be grateful like whoa for any support.)

Secret agents! International adventures! Controversial pizza toppings!


Set Fire to This Cardhouse: A Secret Agent Romance

Enjoy, I hope. :)

So. Uh, hi. Long time no see?

I hope you’re all doing well in these strange and unusual times. (Personally, I started doing YouTube yoga and watching the occasional animal video. Don’t judge. But hit me up if you want links.)

For those of you who might be interested, I also used the time for my first foray into M/F romance: Satellite Skies: A Popstar Romance — set in the Maldives and Toronto, because both locations are wonderful destinations for the mind when most of us are physically grounded. It will be available for free tomorrow on Amazon!

I am also working on a new M/M tale, by the way, but as it’s set in a hospital, I put it on hold for a few months. I’m just about ready to return to it now. (On that note, if anyone is familiar with the workings of a rural hospital, specifically the pediatrics wing, and willing to give me some advice, I’d be ever so grateful.)

And with that, I hope you all have a great and sunny day! Thank you for being here.

So! On the 25th of March, my new book will become available -- published by Dreamspinner, there will be actual paperbacks as well as eBooks. I'm more than a hint excited!

After a lengthy world tour, pop star Samuel Gibbs is looking forward to a nice, quiet break—sleep in, write a bit of music, do his own cooking for a change. He doesn't want his time spoiled by the constant presence of bodyguards, and he is certainly not willing to have someone tail him each time he so much as goes to the shops. No way, no how. It's a good thing, then, that his head of security relents on the matter—or so he leads Samuel to believe.

The break is starting to look even better when Samuel runs into his new neighbor. Ryan Halston is smart and hot and, quite possibly, everything Samuel wants. However, he doesn't know that Ryan is part of the rejected security detail, tasked with protecting him from the dangerous attentions of an unknown stalker.

If you want to check it out:
No Place Left to Run

As of yesterday, there's a Coda to Pull Me Under available. Mostly, it's a collection of snippets that were only ever meant to answer some questions people had, and then everything spun out of my control. It covers roughly one year and alternating POVs — Ben, Jamie, Steve, Henry. It does not reflect the depressing reality of England's performance at the 2014 World Cup, thank you very much.

I tried my best to filter out all mistakes, but there's a good chance a few have slipped through the cracks. At least it’s free? You can download the ePub here. Enjoy, I hope!

On a last note, muchas gracias to everyone who cast a vote for Pull Me Under in the Best M/M Book by a Debut Author of 2014 ! It's so amazing that it currently sits at #1. So, so amazing. I'm all smiles.

“Hey! Could you give some outline tips? Like what a story's outline should look like?” (Shayla)

Writing questions! I love chatting about the writing process, and while I don’t claim to be an authority in any way, I did learn some things the hard way. I hope. (And I have much more to learn. Always. Yay!)

Either way: outlines.

There’s not a solution that fits everyone, and it will partially depend on the length of your story. The shorter your story, the easier your outline, basically. But let’s go with a novel-length work. Here, it will depend on whether you’re an architect or a gardener -- as George R R Martin puts it:

“I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.” (See here.)

Both approaches are equally valid, as is any mixture of the two. It’s up to you to figure out what feels better and makes you happier when writing!

Here’s my personal experience: when I write longer stories, I’m more of an architect than a gardener. For a short thing, I can easily start somewhere and see how it unfolds; for novel-length, I need a detailed map. I need to know where I’m going, all the stops and detours (just small detours, mind, because I don’t want to venture too far off-route), which means that I plan it kind of like one would plan a month-long road trip:

*I think about the people who are on that trip and their specific needs (as in, I detail my characters’ backgrounds, where they come from and where they want to go, how the journey might change them, their little quirks that might impact the trip);
*I do my research (if I venture into a foreign country, I better know its rules -- which also applies to setting a story in a world you’re not familiar with, e.g. in a police station);
*I look at the places and events that I want to see (in the story context: the kind of conversations that need to happen, the interaction between my characters which I need to move them from one status to the next);
*I decide on which route to take;
*I decide on a pace, how fast or slow I want to go, where I want to linger and where I want to speed through because it’s not worth an overnight stay;
*And I try to do all that with the final destination in mind. Because yes, it’s the journey that matters, but I want to arrive in a beautiful place where I can sit down for a little while, look around and think, ‘Well, that was a trip worth taking.’

So that’s the planning I do in advance.

Then I start writing, and my plans for the trip evolve as I write -- because one of the places along the route didn’t fulfill my expectations, or I notice a new town that I desperately want to see, or another seems not worth visiting after all; because a conversation didn’t turn out the way I planned once my characters took over. If this happens (and it does), I take a deep breath and adjust my plans. Most of the time, it doesn’t mean I have to replan my entire trip; it just means I need to tweak it a little. Sometimes I need to go back, revisit a place I already passed and adjust my perspective of it so it fits my new plan.

If you’re more of a gardener, I think you can skip most of the planning I laid out -- except for three things: your characters and their background; research about your setting / universe; your final destination. So in that sense, it’s easier. But there’s a good chance that you’ll have to do a lot more revising once you arrive, possibly go back in your little road diary and change entire sections completely.

It’s really up to you. There’s no right and wrong way to do it -- just a way that suits you best.

(Happy to hear other people's thoughts on this, either here or one Facebook.)