Georgette Heyer Regency Romance #2: ‘An Infamous Army’

I set out to read all of Georgette Heyer’s Regency romances in publication order, and here I am at the second book, written in 1937, and already I’m refusing to jump. The opening is a whole confusion of characters, so, naturally, I turned to the Goodreads reviews for advice. And find that this book is more of a historical treatise on the Battle of Waterloo than fiction. It is, apparently, still required reading for the officer training school at Sandhurst. Well, it may be picky of me, but I read for entertainment, not to be hit over the head with the author’s depth of research. I’ll take a raincheck on this one, and maybe come back to it later, when I feel stronger. Pass. Nice cover, though.

Posted January 9, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Georgette Heyer, Regency romances, Review / 0 Comments

2016 strategy part 2: launches and promotions

I talked in part 1 about my writing and publishing career to date, and my writing plans for 2016. This time, I want to talk about the other half of the writing/publishing equation, which is launching and promotion, or telling the world your books exist. There’s a lot of talk about marketing strategies and building a platform and the value of blog tours or Facebook boosts or whatever. However, the only truly effective measure I’ve found has been paid promotion via mailing list sites. The most effective ones included Ereader News Today, One Hundred Free Books, Book Barbarian, Robin Reads, FreeBooksy/BargainBooksy, Booksends and Free Kindle Books and Tips. Both discounted books (setting the price to 99c) and free worked well. Having a mailing list is reputed to be a good way to boost a new book launch, by setting the book to a special low price for a day or […]

Posted January 7, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in General, Publishing/marketing, Writing musings / 0 Comments

Regency romance review: ‘The Impostor Debutante’ by May Burnett

I enjoyed this one a lot. Too many Regency romances these days have plots that are too silly for words, requiring hero or heroine or both to behave in quite incredible ways. This one felt quite sane, and both main characters behaved like sensible people. Very refreshing. The plot revolves around the neglected niece of a London socialite mother, who decides to do her duty by bringing the girl down from Yorkshire to be suitably introduced into society and married off. But the niece is almost blind, recently married and pregnant, and has no desire to enter London society. She does, however, want to recover her inheritance money, so she sends her half-sister to London in her place to find out why the solicitor isn’t responding to letters. All this is slightly pedestrian, but there is another, more interesting, sub-plot, focused on the half-sister’s background. The romance features the hitherto […]

Posted January 6, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Authors Answer 6: Which mistake or bad habit in writing is the most difficult for you to stop doing?

Adverbs. I know they’re supposed to be a Very Bad Thing, but there are so many situations where a judiciously placed adverb can save a world of verbiage. I’m all for expressing myself briefly and succinctly and efficiently and all those other —ly words. And I’ll also hold my hand up for that other cardinal sin, the adverb used in a dialogue tag, she said shamefacedly. Yes, folks, my characters sometimes speak softly instead of whispering, and they sometimes speak coldly or bracingly or icily or gently as well. My bad. But here’s the thing. Part of the skill of an author is in not boring the reader, and that’s not just in the plot. It also means including plenty of variety in the writing, so that a long succession of ‘he said… she said…’ is broken up by an action beat, or, dare I say it, by tossing in […]

Posted January 6, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in AuthorsAnswer / 0 Comments

2016 strategy part 1: Writing

January 2016 sees me enter my seventeenth month as a self-publisher. To date, I have four books published, the fifth is imminent and the sixth is written in first draft form. The seventh is already taking shape in my head. All of these are part of the Brightmoon Annals world, a connected series of (mostly) stand-alone books. There is also a new project, tentatively entitled the Allamont Annals, a series of Regency romances. The first of these is almost finished. In 2015, I wrote 318,000 words. In terms of sales, the books have had some modest success. Total sales 4,000, borrows 2,000 and over a million pages read. This is nowhere near bestseller status, but it’s satisfying to know that there are complete strangers out there who read and enjoy the books. In addition, I’ve given away more than 20,000 copies for free. But now that I’ve worked out how […]

Posted January 5, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in Current writings, Regency romances, The Dragon's Egg, The Fire Mages' Daughter, Writing musings / 0 Comments

It’s awards nomination time!

It’s the time of year when blogs and forums all over the internet compile their best-of lists, and some of the bigger ones have proper awards, with nominations and voting and so on. This wouldn’t normally affect me much. I usually haven’t read most of the books nominated, haven’t even heard of a lot of them, so I vote for the one or two I’ve read and off I go. But sometimes an amazing thing happens – you scan the list of nominations, and find YOUR OWN BOOK! Yes, folks, The Fire Mages has received a nomination in Reddit’s r/Fantasy Stabby Awards, in the self-published and independent category. Which leaves me almost speechless with joy, even though I have zero chance of winning (there are some fantastic books in that category). So thank you, thank you, thank you, whoever nominated the book – you made a small-time author very happy. […]

Posted January 2, 2016 by PaulineMRoss in General, Publishing/marketing, The Fire Mages / 8 Comments

Mystery review: The Shadow at Greystone Chase by Clara Benson

The tenth and final outing in the Angela Marchmont series of murder mysteries set in the twenties. Most of the books of this series can be read independently of each other, but this one is the exception: it follows on almost directly from The Scandal at 23 Mount Street and has many spoilers for that story, so if you haven’t read the ninth book yet, read on at your peril. After the sombre courtroom drama of the previous book, things are almost back to normal here, with ladylike amateur sleuth Angela and her aristocratic reporter sidekick Freddy investigating a murder from several years ago. But it isn’t quite normal, because the murder in question is the wife of Angela’s love interest, jewel thief Edgar Valencourt. And because she feels guilty about the events of book nine, she agrees to try. The mystery isn’t particularly complicated. I guessed the identity of […]

Posted December 31, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Mystery review: The Scandal at 23 Mount Street by Clara Benson

The ninth and penultimate outing in the Angela Marchmont series of murder mysteries set in the twenties is a complete change of pace. After the light-hearted, almost flippant, tone of the last few books, suddenly life takes a very grave turn for Angela, when her past comes back to haunt her and she has a fight for her very life on her hands. The mystery this time isn’t so much in whodunit, which is almost incidental, but how on earth Angela is going to get out of the mess she’s in. I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler if I say that I never doubted that she would get out of it, but even though I guessed something of how it would go, there was a surprise in store at the end. In fact, there were a lot of revelations about the past, although one of them I’d guessed […]

Posted December 31, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Mystery review: The Trouble at Wakeley Court by Clara Benson

The eighth outing in the Angela Marchmont series of murder mysteries set in the twenties sees our heroine drawn into her most preposterous case yet, as a foreign princess is threatened with assassination at the private girls’ school attended by Angela’s god-daughter, Barbara. I won’t attempt to describe the plot – let’s just say it’s convoluted, and leave it at that. I’m pleased to report that I guessed the identity of the villain right from the start here, but it didn’t hamper my enjoyment in the slightest. For those who enjoy boarding school stories, complete with middle-of-the-night chases across the lawn, creeping about with torches in the attic and teachers who are not all they seem, this will be right up your alley. I particularly enjoyed the games mistress’ robust attitude towards dealing with intruders. Angela solves the case, as usual, and all the loose ends are neatly resolved. This […]

Posted December 31, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 0 Comments

Pauline’s self-published gems of 2015

This is the third year running that I’ve cobbled together a list of self-published gems from my reading over the year. For anyone who’s not tried self-published books before, it can be difficult to find quality reading among the morass of poorly-edited and derivative junk out there. I’ve learned to be very selective about what I spend time on, but even so, there are still a lot of not terribly good books around. BUT if you look carefully, there are plenty of gems around. The best self-published books bring a freshness and vitality to their genres that make them a delight to read. These are some that I loved wholeheartedly. PART 1: FANTASY: The Proving series: Marina Finlayson Urban fantasy at its best – dragons and a whole panoply of shifters, a heroine who’s a mother of a young son (a refreshing change from the usual teenage kickass protagonist), a […]

Posted December 31, 2015 by PaulineMRoss in Review / 3 Comments