Happy Day-After Valentine’s Day

This is the season of love, and what better way to celebrate it than to read a romance novel. Okay, there are other ways, but you see where I’m headed.

When I was doing a radio interview after the launch of Midnight Clear at Christmas, the DJ asked if I wrote romance novels because my husband was particularly romantic. After a pause, I was inspired to quip, “I write romance both because of my husband and in spite of him!” 😉

Life isn’t always a fairy tale, but we can thank God that we are blessed with people who love us now and have loved us in the past, as well as people we have had the privilege to love.

I continue to write Nathan and Sophia’s romance, the next book in the Vacation Friends Romance series, and I’ve included a little snippet below. If you have read any or all three of the previous books in the series, and if you liked the story and haven’t yet posted a review, please do so on Amazon or Goodreads or both. It helps other readers and looks good when I’m doing marketing. Even just doing stars ratings helps.

So, continue to love and to read about love. I believe doing those things helps us be kinder—and more loving.

If your’re not subscribed to the newsletter, please do. Until next month …

From book 4:

Sophia glanced toward the locker-room door again.

On cue, the door slowly opened, and Nathan entered the gym area. His shorts were not brand name. In fact, they had no name: just generic, baggy black gym shorts beneath a rather ugly lime-green T-shirt. Maybe he wasn’t as pretentious as she thought he was. She narrowed her eyes to focus on the writing on his shirt. It simply said, “Love one another.” Under that was “John 13:34.”

Oh, great. He was some righteous holy roller who thought he knew what God wanted for the world. Yeah, she had him pegged right to begin with. Of course, there was a slim possibility that he was simply a nice Christian guy. She shook her head. Nah.

And too bad. He was handsome. His neck was bent as he concentrated on untangling his earphones. Although his hair was relatively short, he had evidently spent good money on the cut, and the front was thick. So, with his head down, his dark bangs, which had been styled back off his face, tumbled down over his forehead. He seemed younger and a little more vulnerable than before.

Suddenly, he looked up and caught her eye—“caught” being the operative word because she had been gawking. But instead of gloating, his honey-brown cheeks turned pink, and he bit his lower lip and hiked his shoulders. Then he held out his tangled earphones and stepped toward the desk where she sat. She stood again.

“There has to be a better way to store these things in my gym bag,” he said.

She couldn’t help but smile. “Uh, there is, you know. Chuck them and buy wireless earbuds.”

“Ha. Ha. I’ll have you know I use wireless headphones every day in my job. But I like these wired ones for working out. I can easily plug them into your very state- of-the-art bikes or treadmills or EFX machines and choose whatever channel I’d like to watch on the mounted TVs.” He leaned toward her, conspiratorially. “Pete told me all that.” Then he straightened and cleared his throat. “The thing is, I use wireless at work. Tangled wires are for play. You must know we rich lawyers don’t like to mix work and play.”

She recognized that he was babbling, and it was cute. She tried to scowl at his long-windedness, but she was pretty sure the result made her look slightly demented. “I thought you were a paralegal.”

He gave one quick nod and then put an earpiece in one ear, despite the still tangled mess below. As he turned to head toward the EFX machines, he shot back, “Aha. So, you were paying attention.”

He was already halfway to the back of the gym before she mumbled, “Well played.”

Marketing: The Bane of a Writer’s Existence

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I give credit to author Michael Barrington for the idea of marketing with your clothes, as per the photo to the right. After his wife gave him a shirt similar to the one I’m sporting, he wrote about the attention it gets. I immediately bought one for myself.

We writers would rather write than market, but marketing is like proofreading: It must be done!

Thus, I’ve decided to start sending an e-mail newsletter monthly, instead of a quarterly, hoping it’s not too onerous for readers. If you haven’t signed up yet, please do so on my home page. My goal is to make them short but interesting, including sprinkling interviews with other writers so that you don’t get tired of my voice.

I hope you all got to enjoy Midnight Clear at Christmas. Although each book in the series is “my favorite,” this one was special to me—maybe simply because I love Christmas.

I’m working on book 4 now, Nathan’s romance, and I admit it’s slow-going. Nathan has such a kind heart, and I want to be true to his story. His heroine, Sophia, is strong, sassy, and independent in a way I aspire to be someday. I’ll promise to keep at it if you promise to keep reading!

Free E-Book Until Dec. 12: Wonderfully Made

Get the e-book version of Wonderfully Made at no cost until Monday, December 12. If you’ve already read it and liked it, please review it on Amazon and Goodreads. And don’t forget to check out Midnight Clear at Christmas.

Check Out West Chester, PA, Authors

Just a reminder to visit the Helen Kate Furness Free Library this Saturday to meet some authors and enjoy some snacks. If you're in the West Chester, PA, area, stop by!

Local Author Event

I'll be one of the authors at a local author event at Helen Kate Furness Free Library on September 10. If you're in the West Chester, PA, area, stop by!

Free E-Book Promotion: 5 Days

Amazon is offering the Kindle version of Wonderfully Made for free from June 24 through June 28. If you haven’t read it yet, then get it free now. If you have read it or plan to, and you like it, please leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads. It all helps!

Wonderfully Made is book 2 in the Vacation Friends Romance series. In my next quarterly newsletter, I plan to announce book 3 in this series, a Christmas novella tentatively titled Midnight Clear at Christmas.

Below is a snippet from the “meet cute” of Wonderfully Made. While running on the beach, Abby has run into Cayden and knocked him over. After he gets up, unscathed and maybe a little smitten, he wants to keep the conversation going:

“So who gets you stoked to run?” Cayden asked, lifting his chin to point at her hand on her headphones. “I’m a sixties rock freak, I’m ashamed to admit. They have the right beats for a reasonably steady run.”

Abby looked back at him and then looked down toward the hand that was still resting on her headphones. “Oh, this is Carmen.”

“I don’t know them.”

Abby laughed. It was a robust but high and sweet laugh.

“This is Carmen, the opera.” She wasn’t talking down to him, and she actually looked more embarrassed that she was listening to opera than concerned that he didn’t know what she meant. “Don’t get me wrong; I let my students perform sixties songs for concerts. But this is what geeky music teachers listen to for fun.”

Author, Author (Platform)

Thank you to readers who have agreed to be my guinea pigs for my first trial e-mail blast. An e-mail blast is part of one’s “author platform” (read: self-marketing). I’m writing this blog now so that I can share it with you all. Then, when that works out, I’ll announce signup subscriptions to the blog. (You guys are already signed up voluntarily—or through blood relations.) Because June 24 starts a five-day promotion offering free Kindle versions of Wonderfully Made, I figured this is as good a time as any to start working on my author platform. I’ll send an official blast next week to announce the free promotion. After that, I think I’ll do quarterly e-mails until I know what I’m doing!

You guys are the best! Feel free to comment below, too. I’d love to see how that works.

Newsletter Coming!

I’m entering the world of newsletter writing, part of what those “in the biz” call an author platform. I’ve opened up my blogging to comments (gulp) on this site, and my home page has a space to subscribe to the newsletter. In two weeks, Amazon will be offering the Kindle version of Wonderfully Made for free for five days, so I figure that will be a great time to launch my newsletter. Please subscribe on my home page. Thanks!

99-Cent E-Book

The e-book of of Wonderfully Made is on sale for 99 cents until April 13! If you like it, please leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads.

Reviewing Wonderfully Made

If you've read Wonderfully Made and liked it, please consider reviewing it on Amazon. I'm planning a $0.99 Kindle promotion next month, and the promotional sites like more reviews. Thanks!

If you haven’t read it yet, the $0.99 seven-day deal is coming. I’ll post the info here.

Of course, if you would like to review All for Good as well, I’d greatly appreciate that, too!

Guest Blog and Offer

Check out author Nan Reinhardt’s page, where Nan hosts me in a guest blog. Reply to the question for a chance to win an Amazon gift card.

Radio Interview

On Tuesday, October 12, our local radio station, WCHE, interviewed me about All for Good and Wonderfully Made. I was nervous, but the hosts made me feel right at ease, and I truly enjoyed myself. Here’s the attachment to the 20-minute recording.

Get Free Kindle Book 1

October 8 through 12, Amazon is offering the Kindle version of All for Good for free. Get a copy and share it! Then check out book 2, Wonderfully Made. And if you like them, please write a review on Amazon or Goodreads.

Also, I have to say that it’s very cool to see both books together on Amazon!

Book Club Fun

I got to speak to a book group last night, called Books Between Friends, and even signed some books! It was a blast to be able to talk about the writing process and A Vacation Friends Romance series, as well as to catch up with some people I haven’t seen in 17 years! Fellowship, friendship, and books—what could be more fun?

Reading aloud a few pages from the manuscript to book 2 got me excited for the launch of Wonderfully Made. My fantastic cover designer, Joe McGinty, is working on a cover that I know will draw you in. Look for it soon!

Kindle Countdown: 99 cents!

The Kindle version of All for Good is 99 cents until May 7. I’m hoping to get buzz as I prepare for the launch of book 2 in this series in mid- to late summer.

Valentine’s Week Kindle Countdown Deal

February 3 through 10, Amazon will be offering a Kindle Countdown deal for All for Good. That means that, for only seven days, the Kindle version of this romance novel will cost $1.99 instead of the usual $3.99. The goal is entice new readers to the series. With book two in the review stage, I hope to encourage greater readership.

I’m watching and learning …

Marketing

It’s been more than two months since my last blog. That’s because I don’t think I quite understand the whole drive-people-to-my site thing. I’m going to explore some other options to reach readers—maybe Goodreads blogging.

Today, I worked on book 2 of my “other series.” Book 2 of the Vacation Friends series is in review. It will be interesting to figure out how to balance writing both series and holding a full-time job. That’s certainly a dilemma that I’m NOT complaining about.

Click on my Contact button to let me know you visited this site. I need the feedback to figure out what is the best way to communicate regularly with readers.

I’ve Been Interviewed!

I’m so thankful to author Nan Reinhardt for interviewing me for her blog and introducing me to her readers: https://nanreinhardt.com/welcome-author-roseann-mcgrath-brooks/. Nan is an amazing romance writer, and I’ve been following her since her first book, Rule Number One, published in 2012. Her latest series, Four Irish Brothers Winery, is charming, and the characters are so relatable! I want to be their friend! Don’t miss her Women of Willow Bay series, which focus on the romance stories of mature women.

Launched

So my book has launched on Amazon. I’m nervous but excited. Now it’s time to start advertising it. I posted it on Facebook, so friends and family will see it today. I think I’ll wait a bit and then do the Twitter and Instagram thing. I'm up to the editing stage of the second book in the series, but I'll take a break to "market" this one. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes! I started down this road to have fun with it, so I want to keep that tone and that emotion as I go along.

Starting Out

I figured I should start blogging before I launch my book so that I know what I’m doing when the time comes.

Here’s where I am: Within the next week or so, I should be able to launch my first novel, All for Good, through Kindle Direct Publishing on Amazon. I’ll produce an e-book and a print-on-demand version. It sounds fairly simple, but this “prepublishing” stage has been the hardest part of creating a book. I’ve been writing and editing marketing communications my whole career, so the writing and editing part was fun. The rest of it has been, well, scary.

My new friend Lee has been working on formatting my book for both digital and print. She does an amazing job, and you should check out her book, At Last, on Amazon. However, there are so many tiny things to consider, and to my coworkers who are quality-control proofreaders, my hat goes off to you. My old friend Joe has been working on my cover. I’m mortified that I’ve had so many tweaks along the way. On the bright side, we are closing in on the perfect cover.

So in some ways, I’m at the point where I can’t wait. In other ways, I’m still nervous as can be.

I’m hoping that the next time you hear from me, I’ll have a link to my book on Amazon!