darquedreamerreads-blog

[darquedreamerreads-blog]

The Mermaid Diaries (8) - My Book is OUT!

Seventeen-year-old Ellie dreams of mermen. She writes fanfiction about them and spends time in underwater kingdoms in her imagination, trying to escape the sad reality: she is an orphan. And not only that, but she’s bullied every day at school -she’s a nerd, she hates sports, she loves books and she used to be overweight. What’s not to bully?

One day, the bullies go too far. They try to drown her, but at the last minute an otherworldly creature shows up in the water. He keeps her breathing and tells her to live: “How will you be able to save anyone if you can’t even save yourself?”

She thinks it was a dream, but the emerald-eyed merman boy who rescued her appears in her school the next day. Is he really the exiled prince of an ancient kingdom that’s on the brink of utter destruction? And is he asking her to save him? Or is something far more sinister and deadly lurking in the water that surrounds her little Greek town?

When myth and reality collide, can love save their lives?

What readers say:

A story that makes your heart grow.-M.B, a reader

Loved it! I loved the author’s development of character, plotline, and conflict in each of her books. I read ALOT of YA, with similar genre appeal, and M.C. Frank writes with such a uniquevoice, making her novels more compelling and engaging than most others. Thankyou for sharing your gift! -Zuleyka Martinez I really liked the refreshing twist on mermaids and mermans. -Zahara Porter I LOVE IT TO DEATH!!!!!!! Like oh my, that was good, scratch that, amazing! The plot was absolutely fantastic and the characters are so wellwritten they felt real. I love the fangirling like yassss and the part abouther being bullied. It was so heart warming and realistic, I love it. Please write more! -Brynn from Swoon Reads Great story, witty main character and some steamy love. I couldn’t waitto finish reading, and have now stayed up way past my bedtime trying to finishthis book! -Tandrence This book reminds me of Fangirl, although I enjoyed this more. -S.C.M. I so very love how the book promoted the strengths of a bullied person,bringing out the positive. Too often we see characters turning to self harm andeverything else negative once things start looking bad. Salt for Air, however,gave a strong message that things can be different, a message which I believemust have come from true experience. […] I can’t believe I read the whole story in just two days (some 70% of it in oneday!). -Kristina Vallaste, author OMG!!!!! DEAD!!!!! I LOVEDTHIS SO FREAKING MUCH!!!! SO CUTE!!!! -Lucky Penny This is excellent. M.C. Frank has a wonderful, strong voice. Ellie isincredibly drawn. Loved this story…more, please? -Katie Kaleski, author of The Now or Never Moment

Salt for Air is perfect for fans of:

·         Greek mythology

·         Kdrama - esp. The Legend of The Blue Sea

·         Mermen/mermaids

·         Hate to love romance

·         Action-adventure mature YA

·         My Mad Fat Diary

·         Books about readers or writers of fanfiction (see Fangirl, Eliza and her Monsters, etc)

·         Impossible romance

·         Cool siblings relationships

·         A hint of drama

·         Epic battles with a tiny bit of bloodsplatter sprinkled

·         Sea monsters

·         Fairytale endings

·         The girl rescuing the boy for once

·         Not super-slim girls dealing with their bullies and their self-image

·         Girl friendship & Girl powers

· ��       Modern Greece - beaches - ruins - sunsets

         Anti-tropes

         Dragons

·         I think I should stop

“If you die for me, I’ll kill you.” -Salt for Air   ©2018 M.C. Frank

Find it everywhere:

Amazon

Amazon UK

The Book Depository

Barnes and Noble

Read it for FREE

[darquedreamerreads-blog]

Happy Relase Day to Nyxia Unleashed by Scott Reintgen!

[darquedreamerreads-blog]

Totally geeking out!! Need this now!! @mcfrankauthor is killing me with suspense!! <3

“I want to see you. The real you,” I tell him as soon as we’re alone.

He looks me up and down, and his eyes are serious and deep. Unblinking. “In the water?” His lip twitches.

“Well, yeah.” A thought strikes me. “Can you get into the water?”

“Can I…” He looks confused, like he doesn’t understand what the words mean.

But of course he does.

Has he ever been in the sea? He can’t have. Maia says he’s the prince of the ocean, and yet he hasn’t… My brain stops functioning. A fierce need to help him washes over me. Stop it, Ellie. Just stop it. “I mean is it safe?”

“Haven’t you been paying attention? Nothing is safe.”

-Salt for Air, © 2018 M.C. Frank

[darquedreamerreads-blog]

This! <3 I am loving @mcfrankauthor‘s mermaid diaries, and her answers to these questions have me even more excited to read #SaltForAir! Eeeeek!

The Mermaid Diaries (3) - The Prince

Introducing one of the main characters of my Greek mythology inspired novel Salt for Air

Name: Oceanus (Ky)

Species: Merman

Title: Prince

I found a set of questions for Character solidifying on the lovely @forlornraven​‘s blog - source:thescriptlab.com - and I am going to do my best to answer them for Ky, so that anyone who is interested can get to know a little bit about him.

Also, here is his face claim: 

What is accurate in the above photo?

Freckles

Face shape

Hair color and texture

Bun

What isn’t accurate in the above photo?

Eyes - Ky has emerald eyes

Skin color - his skin is sun-kissed, really tan

On  to the questions! (Will only be answering those relevant to His Highness, so that we’re not here all day.)

1. How does your character think of their father? What do they hate and love about him? What influence - literal or imagined - did the father have?

Ky’s father was King Triton. Ky never knew him, because he was murdered shortly after Ky was born and Ky was exiled, so no influence whatsoever.

3. Brothers, sisters? Who do they like? Why? What do they despise about their siblings?

Ky has one sister, Lorelei. She is a piece of work gorgeous warrior siren princess, who is also an oracle and fiercely protective of him.

10. Is your character street-smart, book-smart, intelligent, intellectual, slow-witted?

Ky has been living in our world (having been exiled from his kingdom) since infanthood. He has been attending human school and is a brilliant student, although he doesn’t care about our science and history a lot. He comes from a much more highly-evolved world and has a bit of a superior attitude to our school subjects (although who doesn’t).

Also, he is a rather brilliant hacker.

13. Did they like school? Teachers? Schoolmates?

He hates school. He is kind of worshipped by his schoolmates, and he has a team of “dudes” that follow him around as puppies. Every girl at school is also starry-eyed around him, but so far he hasn’t noticed. He’s kind of trying to stay focused on staying alive.

15. Did they graduate? High-School? College? Do they have a PHD? A GED?

He is almost 18 years old in human years, currently in his last year of school.

19. What were your character’s deepest disillusions? In life? What are they now?

Ky’s greatest disillusion was and is love. He doesn’t believe in human love, and it’s only natural since he hasn’t known any. He hasn’t had any parents, no family, no peers growing up. He was passed from foster home to foster home, and has always slept with an eye open, waiting to be killed sometime before his eighteenth birthday. Which, you know, is in about a week or so. 

So he’s literally disillusioned by life. It’s not good. Not for him.

21. What are your character’s manners like? What is their type of hero? Whom do they hate?

His manners are good, but he isn’t authentic. 

Since he has to hide his true nature from people, everything he does or says feels like a lie. He acts the way he knows people expect him to, because his survival instinct is all he ever goes on. His life is a constant battle for his life, and he’ll do whatever it takes to stay alive. If that means he has to be polite to the moron who is teaching him ancient Greece’s history (which his ancestors experienced firsthand) he’ll do it.

He doesn’t think anyone in the earthly world deserves the hatred or the contempt of a prince, so he doesn’t hate anyone.  

He has no type of hero. He is his own hero. He’ll save himself. Well, mostly.

22. Who are their friends? Lovers? ‘Type’ or ‘ideal’ partner?

He has no time or respect for love, friendly or otherwise.

26. What does your character’s home look like? Personal taste? Clothing? Hair? Appearance?

He doesn’t have a home, and his personal space no longer exists because SPOILERS. For hair and appearance (during his human form) see image above. Clothing is nothing out of the ordinary for a guy his age, jeans and a fitted T-shirt, he doesn’t care what he puts on as long as he’s alive to walk around in it. Black looks good on him, because of his tan, but the deep emerald of his eyes brings any color to life.

He also loves to wear boots so as to protect his feet from coming in contact with water. If any of his classmates see his skin turn into scales… he’s in big trouble.

28. Who is your character’s mate? How do they relate to him or her? How did they make their choice?

Erm? Read the book? To find out?

29. What is your character’s weaknesses? Hubris? Pride? Controlling?

Now I can’t answer that, because SPOILERS, but I can’t let it go either, because it mentions the magic and Greek word hubris (ύβρις). As you might have guessed by the previous answers, Ky is amazingly proud and amazingly unaware of his pride and condescension. He is a Prince, afer all, even though he has no hope of ever claiming his throne, or returning home alive. But his greatest moment of hybris comes after he meets Ellie and is the basic plot of the entire novel.

32. How does your character react to stress situations? Defensively? Aggressively? Evasively?

He kills stuff. (By stuff I mean squid-like monsters).

33. Do they drink? Take drugs? What about their health?

Ky doesn’t drink or take drugs, but I’m answering this because of the “what about their health”. He is a water creature, actually he is the water creature, so no matter how sick or wounded he may be, water can cure him. Pretty amazing, huh? It pays to be the water Prince, I’m telling you.

36. Do they like to suffer? Like to see other people suffering?

Ky can’t stand to see others suffering. He’s seen a ton of that in his lifetime, and has heard so many tales of how his people are suffering in his absence that his heart is broken. Enough is enough. He’s winning this battle and reclaiming the throne the moment he reaches maturity (18 years). If he’s not dead, of course.

39. What do they like to ridicule? What do they find stupid?

Everyone. Everything.

40. How is their sense of humor? Do they have one?

Not really. When you wake up every morning and do a scan of the room to see if a. you’re still alive and b. there are no sea monsters lurking to tear your insides out, you don’t have much cause for humor or laughter.

41. Is your character aware of who they are? Strengths? Weaknesses? Idiosyncrasies? Capable of self-irony?

He is the heir to the High Throne of the Seven Realms. He has all the strengths and no weaknesses. He is perfect in every way, indestructible, undefeated.

Well, except for the part where he nearly die-

42. What does your character want most? What do they need really badly, compulsively? What are they willing to do, to sacrifice, to obtain?

He wants that Throne. It’s his destiny and his duty. People are dying every day that he’s in exile, and it weighs heavily in his conscience. Nothing is going to stop him from rescuing his home.

And he’ll do anything, kill anyone, deceive everyone, in order to get it. He’ll use his friends, he’ll sacrifice all. Anything.

Anything.

Anything?

43. Does your character have any secrets? If so, are they holding them back?

No one knows that he grows scales and can breathe through his neck when is in the water. No one knows that he is going to be King. No one knows that he is fighting for his life. 

It’s a pretty lonely existence, but he doesn’t care as long as he can stay alive. He was hoping to be able to tell everything to Ellie, but he can’t. He’s keeping the biggest secret from her: she’s the one who is supposed to save him. Now how to break the news to her?

44. How badly do they want to obtain their life objectives? How do they pursue them?

That is literally the plot of the novel, so… you know. Not telling.

45. Is your character pragmatic? Think first? Responsible? All action? A visionary? Passionate? Quixotic?

Ky has had to mature beyond his earthly years. He’s is nothing if not responsible. Of course all that responsibility and accurate action has to go out the window, if this book is to turn him into a decent character. But can it? CAN IT?

46. Is your character tall? Short? What about size? Weight? Posture? How do they feel about their physical body?

He is pretty tall and muscular; he has been training in combat since he was five by [SPOILER] and his arms are roped with muscles. He is spectacularly gorgeous, as a sea god would be, and has the voice of a siren (literally).

48. How are your character’s gestures? Vigorous? Weak? Controlled? Compulsive? Energetic? Sluggish?

Regal.

49. What about voice? Pitch? Strength? Tempo and rhythm of speech? Pronunciation? Accent?

His voice, as I said before, has the quality of a siren, which he is, as well as a nereid. Other than that he has a normal Greek accent, having grown up there since he was a baby. He is well-spoken, but doesn’t talk like a King. He talks like a normal teenager. Mostly.

50. What are the prevailing facial expressions? Sour? Cheerful? Dominating?

Sad. Determined. Superior. Contemptive. Proud. Lonely. Commanding.

But if, on one rare occasion, he should choose to be kind… Then he’s radiant. Like a King.

*aesthetics created by me. I do not own these individual images, except one, but please do not repost the aesthetics without credit.

Read Salt for Air

Add it on goodreads

Read the previous Mermaid Diaries

Read the Robin Hood WIP Diaries

[darquedreamerreads-blog]

Fangirling all over the place here!!

[darquedreamerreads-blog]

Eeeeek!! I am so excited for this!! <3

The Mermaid Diaries (1) - Announcing my new book!

New book, new diary.

You poor people lucky lot get to follow my misadventures as I prepare my new baby to face the world! 

My new book is Salt for Air and I will be announcing the publication date and final book cover soon. 

You should have that on a T-shirt

Time to answer some questions no one asked!

1. Why is this book only now getting to see the light of day, even though I have had the manuscript all done and ready to be beta-read for more than a year? Something bad happened. Read what.

2. What is it about?

It’s about this:

Ellie dreams of mermen.

She writes fanfiction about them, spends time in underwater kingdoms in her imagination, and reads tons of books and blogs about them, trying fiercely to escape reality: she is an orphan.

And not only that, but she’s bullied every day at school -she’s a nerd, she hates sports, she loves books and TV shows and she used to be overweight. Also, her dad who died a few months ago was a math professor at her school. What’s not to bully, right?

One day, the bullies go too far.

They didn’t mean to actually kill her (isn’t that what they always say afterwards?) but they did push her head in the toilet until she started drowning. But before she actually gave up, someone showed up in front of her. In the water. (You know, the toilet water.) He told her to live.

He also told her that she wouldn’t be able to save anyone if she couldn’t even save herself.

Which was weird. (Toilet-talking merman aside). Because she sees Emerald Eyes (that’s what she calls him in her head) again after that, so he wasn’t a figment of her imagination. Also, he told her she was going to save someone. Who? And also lol (she’s about to get evicted from her home, she can’t save even that, let alone saving an ancient civilization and the life of its exiled Prince). 

3. What inspired it?

Greek mythology in general, and more specifically three myths/creatures:

The Odyssey. Two line synopsis: Wealthy warrior has to face a long journey filled with magic, romance, danger and battle before he can reach his beloved home.

Alcestis: A much-beloved King learns that he will die in a few days, unless one of his subjects takes his place; when none comes forward, his wife, the Queen, takes his place.

The water creatures of Greek mythology: nereids, sirens, Poseidon, Triton, Medusa, Scylla, the amazons (spoiler alert - there is an army of those) and many more…

4. Who will like it?

Salt for Air is perfect for fans of:

Greek mythology

Kdrama - esp. The Legend of The Blue Sea

Mermen/mermaids

Hate to love romance

Action-adventure mature YA 

My Mad Fat Diary

Books about readers or writers of fanfiction (see Fangirl, Eliza and her Monsters)

Impossible romance

Cool siblings relationships

A hint of drama

Epic battles with a tiny bit of bloodsplatter sprinkled

Sea monsters

Fairytale endings

The girl rescuing the boy for once

Not super-slim girls dealing with their bullies and their self-image

Girl friendship

Modern Greece - beaches - ruins - sunsets

I think I should stop

5. Where is it now?

Why are you asking, do you think you’d maybe like to rea-?

Oh, ok. 

Right now I’m editing it once more, since I haven’t read it in months and months, to get it ready for my lovely beta readers. (I will be picking them from here.)

Next up I will be announcing the official release date, as soon as I find my reliable betas, and then it will be shipped off to the editor and right to your hands. 

When I’m ready to share it with the world, you are all invited to join my team and get your own free ARC! I am beyong excited for this book because in it I share a very special part of myself: my cultural inheritance.

5. How can I start reading it RIGHT NOW?

You can start reading it here for free today!

If you’ve read this far, thank you! 

If you’re as excited for my little mermaid story, leave me a comment, it would make my day.

If you’ve had enough and would like me to shut up now I agree I’ll leave you with this teaser version of the cover (not final).

[darquedreamerreads-blog]

Looking forward to this one!

[darquedreamerreads-blog]

I still get the feels when I think about Lose Me by @mcfrankauthor! <3

w a t e r   +   k i s s e s   +   p r i d e   +   p r e j u d i c e 

Lose Me novel aesthetics created by the lovely @darquedreamerreads

“I was so scared. I thouhgt I would lose you.”  © 2017 M.C. Frank

Read Lose Me.

Post a Lose Me. thing a day for April by M.C. Frank

Take part in the instagram challenge

[darquedreamerreads-blog]

Welcome to the world that lies beyond the smoke #NewRelease #Fantasy #FairyTaleRetelling #Fae #YAReads #YALit thndr.me/0Mr7xU http://thndr.me/0Mr7xU

[darquedreamerreads-blog]

Plagiarism is wrong no matter how you look at it. Don’t be that person. If you can’t come up with your own ideas, then celebrate those amazing, talented people who can and be a friend. Hard working people like @mcfrankauthor should never have to be afraid to share what is in their hearts, souls, and minds. Being a friend and supporter and being HONEST is more important than stealing work to pass off as your own.

The Robin Hood WIP diaries (16) - Plagiarism or My Book was Stolen

Let’s talk the p-word. 

Disclaimer: I myself would click away from this article if I saw it a year or two ago. You see, I used to be (and still am) a writer who fears the p-word so much, I am scared that being associated with a simple post about it, even reading it, will somehow bring upon me the curse of being plagiarized.

Turns out, I was afraid of it for a reason.

First of all,

let’s look it up, shall we?

p l a  • g i a • r i s m

the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.  

Synonyms: copying, infringement of copyright, piracy, theft, stealing, poaching, appropriation.

As some of you might already know, if you have been following this blog, way more than a year ago, I published my entire Greek mythology fantasy retelling novel Salt for Air on Swoon Reads.

Swoon Reads is a website where authors publish their finished and fully edited manuscripts for a chance at publication by Macmillan without an agent. (That is an extremely short version of what this amazing site dodes, but if you are interested in more, you are welcome to chek them out.) I had the best of times there, met the most wonderful and talented authors, many of whom are my friends to this day.

H O W E V E R

Tragedy struck when a random person whom I didn’t know (and wasn’t registered on the site) saw it, liked it, and proceeded to steal my title and entire parts of the opening scenes.

I, of course, immediately took it down, and emailed the staff, but they couldn’t care less and pretended they could do nothing about it, although I sent them all the places where she had published my novel. I was completely let down and disappointed by their dismissal of the whole thing, because they keep reassuring everyone on their site, in multiple places, that they will do the “best they can” to protect our manuscripts, and that the files they upload aren’t downloadable.

In despair, I turned to the Swoon Reads community on twitter, and my friends there helped me so much with encouraging words, similar experiences (!) and words of sound advice.

I let that person who had stolen my work know I had seen it, and she deleted it, but I have blocked her since, because she tried to deny it and harass me, so I have no idea what she is doing with it. Of course, that’s not the point. I know she can’t write the same exact story as me, nor make it as awesome as I have (just saying-lol)

The point is this:

It’s real, and I am a victim of it. 

Inspite of what other “authors” or “publishers” on this or any other site or platform may tell you, it is a thing. There are desperate, ruthless, unscrupulous or (best case senario) just plain stupid people out there who will post your art without credit, copy your ideas, steal your words.

This is the internet, after all.

There are tons of empty people roaming about, looking for souls to eat. I know this sounds overly dark, but it’s true. And by “empty” I mean people who don’t have ideas of their own, no creative spark, but crave the attention and personal rewards of other creators of original content they see online. They might be better at advertizing themselves or their stolen “stuff” than you (as we all have seen in the past, in cases of famous authors, artists, and even scientists) but they could never in a million years have created it. And that’s the crux of the matter.

I put Salt for Air in a drawer, never to see the light of day.

Why?

Well, for one because I felt violated. I was violated. My rights had been trampled upon and I no longer felt safe in that world I had created laboriously, because someone had invaded, stolen, and shattered it. My heart was broken for so long, I couldn’t even remember what it had felt like to write without a constant feeling of deep despair.

You see, that person didn’t just steal my story. She stole part of my soul with it, she sucked the joy out of my entire creative process. That’s what plagiarism is all about.

But there’s a second reason. A second fear, even greater. The what if fear. 

The fear that’s constantly in front of our eyes, in the success of people we know have stolen ideas and passed them off as their own, and made entire fortunes out of it. I won’t add examples, but I’m sure you had at least one pop into your head as you were reading that sentence. (The first thing that popped into my head was the example of a “physicist” who is widely known as the “inventor of things” and the “father of things” when he stole EVERYTHING from other scientists, and nothing of his was original. Fellow-nerds will know who I’m talking about. And sadly, no, it’s not just one person. Also, I’m thinking of an “author” who has stolen every word and character he/she ever wrote. I’m sure you have your own examples in mind.)

So, as I said before, Salt for Air is mine. It will always be the story in my head, which turned into pages on my laptop and eventually printed pages in my hand. It will always be mermen and Greek mythology and sea monsters and salty kisses and tears in the rain and fanfic writers of an imagined book.

Right now I know that this person who stole parts of my story isn’t likely to become widely-known based just on what she plagiarized from me. (Although you never know.) But what if it happens again? What if that fear stops me from writing another word? 

I struggled a lot with beginning to write again after that, especially when i saw how little the publishing industry cares for human rights or even just creative rights. Which is zero. I don’t mind, thankfully, I’m not part of that industry, but the fear is still there.

I started to write the Robin Hood WIP, although it was the worst time in my life to be undertaking such a huge task, because I wanted to get back into the joy of writing and creating new worlds. Robin Hood and his world have always made me feel safe and protected for some reason, and I craved the feeling of creating that story.

But Salt for Air remained a wound in my heart, an empty hole.

Now, a year or so later, I finally mustered up the courage, given to me largely by the lovely community of The Book Robin Hoods and their camaraderie and support, to share a tiny peek of SFA (here). The response both on the site, on my blog, facebook and instagram, blew me away.

People heard that story for the first time (of course) and wanted more. So I realized I was being stupid, holding myself and my story back because of some immoral person.

But not quite as stupid as I’d been before.

I’m wiser now. I know that this is a real threat to all of us authors out there, especially the indie ones, that don’t have a team of publishers behind us. But you know what? I’ll take my team of reader and writer friends any day over that people I emailed over at SR who didn’t give a damn about my problem (largely created due to lack of professionalism on their site) -I think the problem might be the incompetence of the specific staff member who responded to my emails with rudeness and indifference, but no matter how much I asked to be referred to someone else, they refused to reply. Still, I feel so much safer with my friends than I ever felt with those “professionals” who couldn’t bother to answer my emails. Wouldn’t you? 

I fully realize that the truth is this: No one can protect you from plagiarism. No one can promise you that no matter what, people won’t steal or repost your ideas.

No one can guarantee you that others will behave in a decent, humane way.

So what do we do? Keep our ideas, our stories, our art, in the drawer forever? No. I understand that now. That would be even worse. Then we ourselves would be robbing ourselves of the joy of sharing our art with the world.

The answer is the exact opposite: Be brave.

Now that the worst has happened, I find myself strangely free, as I begin the tentative process of dusting off my copy of Salt for Air, and looking to publish it.

I find myself unafraid as I keep sharing intimate details of my process of writing my Robin Hood WIP in these diaries with all of you. I share my ideas more freely than before.

Why? Once more, Robin has the answer.

Robin Hood, who has lost everything a man can lose, fortune, home, name and decency, and is still fighting with all he’s got and being merry in the process.

Because once what you were afraid of has happened, there’s nothing to fear anymore. You just do what you have to do, and fake courage until you actually feel it. 

Letting bad stuff defeat me was far worse than what that person did to me. I realize that now. It took me a year and more, but thankfully I did. Better late than never, right? Letting the immoral people win, that’s the worst that can happen. Not plagiarism. Fear is the worst thing that can happen to you and me, and we have to fight against that with all our strength.

Because the worst thing a plagiarist can do is steal your basic idea, but you still have that brain that created your idea, so you can create an even better one. But if you allow another’s crime to stop you (which is totally understandable) you will be the one who commits the bigger crime: giving up.

And you must never, ever give up.

Stay safe, copyright-protect everything, watermark if you possibly can, and double-lock your pdfs and ebooks. (That’s a figure of speech, I don’t know if double-lock exists for pdfs). People can still step on your heart, of course. So what do you do?

I can’t tell you what to do, how much to share, or when to stop in order to protect yourself. Educating yourself about plagiarism and crimes committed against you will certainly help, and this entire article is written with that as a given. Apart from that, I can only tell you what I’m going to to.

I am going to be fighting against what had been done to me and against me, by sharing the hell out of my book(s) and not letting anyone intimidate me. 

I will continue to share excerpts of my story generously, because that’s the one basic thing that makes readers want to read my books: the teasers. I will not post entire chapters until a few months before publication, but I will not be shy or stringent with my ideas. I will let the whole world know (or at least the few people in it who are interested.) I will not sit in bed and cry all day (well, not any more.) I will accept that I have a right to feel awful about what happened to me, that it wasn’t something I deserved in any way, and move on.

I will publish my stolen story, because it’s not stolen, it’s mine. I will polish it up within an inch of its life, and send it to betas, and rework it again, and then I will not be afraid to put it out there, free chapters, promos, aesthetics and all. Full on.

It took me a bit of time, but I’m finally doing it. I’m stepping out there. Out of my comfort zone, but also out of my pain.

I hope you’ll do the same.  

Read all the Robin Hood WIP diaries

Read all about Salt for Air

[darquedreamerreads-blog]

Myself and #TheBookRobinHoods were tagged by @mcfrankauthor do to the #FutureMeTag!

[darquedreamerreads-blog]

So happy for you @mcfrankauthor!! I am SOO excited for Robin Hood!! <3

Celebrating surpassing 100K words on my Robin Hood WIP 📚🌲 Will be looking for betas soon!