Seeking 9 More Reviewers for Paranormal Romance (Free ARCs included!)

My MC goes to a cathedral like this. This beautiful photograph is by Joshua Holko.

I am sitting at 41 interested reviewers and have 9 spots left to review When Stars Die, a paranormal romance that is more heavy in the paranormal than the romance. You will receive a free ARC in exchange for doing a review and/or quote. You may not receive it for a month or two, but all I would require for now is an e-mail address to put on the list. It is being published by AEC Stellar Publishing.

In any case, here is a bare bones summary of what the book is about:

Amelia Gareth’s brother is a witch and the only way to save her family from the taint in his blood is to become a professed nun at Cathedral Reims in the snowy city of Malva. However, in order to become professed, she must endure trials that all nuns must face.

Surviving these trials is not easy, especially for Amelia, who is being stalked by shadowy beings only she can see. They’re searching for people they can physically touch, because only those they can touch can see them. Amelia soon learns why she is being stalked when she accidentally harms her best friend with fire during the third trial. Fire is a witch’s signature. The shadows are after witches.

Now Amelia must decide what to do: should she continue on her path to profession knowing there is no redemption for a witch, or should she give up on her dream and turn away from Cathedral Reims in order to stop the shadows who plan to destroy everything she loves?

 

Comment if you are interested! You can either e-mail me your e-mail (you can find my e-mail in the contact tab), or leave your e-mail in the comments.

Why Amazon

Image via CrunchBase

I had a reader ask me why the Amazon…

 

via Why Amazon.

 

 

This article by Shiloh Walker pretty much explains why I press for Amazon reviews in regards to the people I seek out to do potential reviews for my ARC. Have you ever noticed that high star reviews often show up in your book feed? As in, the feed that says if you like this, you’ll like this? That’s where I want my book to be when people look up books similar to it.

Blog reviews are great. Fantastic. They can help loads, if they are high traffic blogs. But having five reviews on Amazon isn’t going to get me as much attention as having 50 reviews on Amazon, especially high-rated reviews–and I’m not begging for high reviews. I’m simply trying to point out the importance of doing reviews on Amazon and not just blogs. You also get deals to receive even more attention. They are a big deal, and I wish people wouldn’t shy away from doing reviews on Amazon. I did a review for Shannon Thompson’s book on here and copied and pasted that same review on Amazon because I know that the star rating matters and can get her more exposure.

Don’t shy away from Amazon. Those reviews matter, especially if your blog doesn’t receive a whole lot of traffic. If your blog receives like 20 views a day and only 5 are unique, that isn’t going to help me much. I will appreciate you to death for choosing to do the review, but I also have this expectation that it will be put on Amazon, where it will likely receive more traffic. Your review on Amazon can help someone’s decision to buy the book. In fact, my review on Amazon for Shannon’s book helped someone decide whether or not they wanted to buy it, and Amazon will let you know. And I felt pretty awesome knowing my review did that for someone.

Plus, I am making an entirely separate list for people who do just reviews on their blogs, and these are generally high traffic blogs. Now this isn’t me talking about people who buy my books. They are under no obligation to rate. This is me talking about all those who will be receiving an ARC. I would love reviews on both Amazon and blogs, really. I would appreciate them to death.

 

 

 

Our Slice of Heaven Among Mental Illness Hell

So lately I’ve been thinking about how to use Tumblr as a marketing platform to reach out to teen readers. Then I realized I don’t think that I can. Tumblr’s great to retreat to when I need more personal advice, but I don’t think it’s so great as a marketing platform for anyone. The people on there fit the ‘misery-loves-company’ phrase perfectly, and it honestly makes me very angry.

My therapist told me I should use the depressing parts in my novel to hook them, but honestly, having to do that makes me a little sick. These are the same people who will post triggering pictures in innocent tags (like ‘bipolar’ or ‘mental health’) with a complete disregard that those pictures will affect someone negatively, like me. I then realized these people are content with misery.

I get it. Mental illness sucks, but it angers me to no end when people don’t even try to find happiness. I remember speaking with one boy on Tumblr who absolutely refused to acknowledge that his parents were just trying to help him, who believed everyone hated him, and kept reminding me that he hated himself too. It made me angry because he came to me for advice and was throwing it all back in my face. You can freaking change your thinking, even though you can’t change the way you feel. You can work to find happiness, even when depressed. You can’t sit around waiting for something when a slice of heaven takes a battle to have. I understand depression makes you think and feel these things, but this is why you go to therapy and listen to your therapist’s advice when he/she tells you to separate yourself from your mental illness.

I have no sympathy for people who drown in negative thinking while actively refusing to do nothing about their thinking and insisting they can never be happy when they haven’t taken a single step toward working for that slice of heaven. People like that infuriate me because even while I was depressed I was fighting to get better through therapy, ballet, work, and medication. I didn’t lie down and die. There were days where I let myself drown in the feelings, where I wanted to die, but not once did I consider stopping my medications, no matter how much they weren’t working for me. Happiness was something I wanted, and I knew that for someone with a mental illness, obtaining it would not be easy.

Why do some mentally ill people not want to be happy? By actively refusing to take a single step toward happiness, people are essentially saying they’d rather drown in misery while making others miserable around them (and yes, we do need to be considerate of those around us, even when ill. Constant misery can make others miserable) rather than trying to find some way to be happy.

If you can’t take care of your emotional health first, don’t expect others to take care of it for you.