Sunday, January 31, 2016

January 31, 2016

Hiya, lovelies!

So last week I mentioned doing a giveaway for the publication of Twisted, where the prize will consist of a FREE print book with a little something written inside! If you're digging that idea, then keep reading!

Basically, I'm going to be holding this every Sunday throughout the month of February. I will give a week to get names recorded, then when Friday comes, I will randomly select a winner! Therefore there will be one winner per week!

Here is a an excerpt from the story:

“I’m sorry,” he said and shoved his hands in his pockets. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
            “Why not?”
            “You know why, Claire.”
            I swallowed thickly, a lump forming in the back of my throat. “I don’t care.”
            His eyes bored into my own. They had darkened into burning pits, his lips pulled back into an ugly sneer. “Have you forgotten who I am? I—” he raked a hand through his hair, shaking his head.
            “I like you,” I whispered, the words leaving my lips without my brain registering. Too late to turn back now. “I really like you, Heath. Not for what you do, but for who you are.”
            “For who I am?” He stepped closer, hands tightening into fists at his side, and I suddenly became aware of how tall he was. He towered over me, and a flash of fear crawled along my spine. I saw a brief glimmer of the assassin Heath was. I’d stand no match against him. “For some people, I’m the last person they see. I kill people. There’s a reason for it, but that doesn’t change what I do.”
            My back hit the door, and he kept stepping closer, and I couldn’t look him in the eyes. “I’m not afraid of you,” I said, but my voice shook.
            “You are,” he murmured, as an observation. “And that’s how it should be.”



How this is going to happen will be like this:

1) I will make the announcement, ya'll will tweet #TWISTEDGIVEAWAY and you must also tag my username too - so I can see it! My username is @SmilinForYa ; by doing this, you will automatically be put into the box to win the free book. But you HAVE to tweet with the tag AND my username - I will be looking for it! I'll favorite your tweet, to let you know your name is down.

2) On Friday, as I mentioned above, I will randomly 'pull from the box' and select the lovely winner!

3) Then on Sunday, it'll commence again!

As I've mentioned before, when the book is published, it'll only come out as an eBook format to the public eye initially. I do plan on printing a few to give to family and friends, but until I reach enough sales, I unfortunately won't be able to do it immediately.

So, this will be the first week of the #TWISTEDGIVEWAY ! Start tweeting !!

Love,
Sarah xx

Friday, January 29, 2016

Sarah Reeves



--SARAH REEVES--

RANDOM FACTS ABOUT ME

1) A Texan for over 10 years or so



2) Mountains > the beach



3) Food is EVERYTHING


4) Love to bake!! 


5) Currently going to Texas A&M University for an English degree (subject to change)



6) Favorite place I've been to out of the USA is the Aran Islands, in Ireland! (photos courtesy of me!)






7) Love writing fan fiction! (though I haven't updated any of my fics for a while)


8) Some favorite music artists at the top of my head: the Beatles, Journey, Kansas, Boston, Poison, Breaking Benjamin, Radiohead, One Direction, Lady Gaga, The Weekend, Queen, Ed Sheeran, and Within Temptation! 


9) Some favorite movies at the top of my head: What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Titanic, Dances With Wolves, 17 Again, Chocolat, Never Been Kissed, 10 Things I Hate About You, The Dark Knight, The Iron Giant, and the original Halloween! 


10) Favorite books at the top of my head: Anything by Sarah Dessen, though my favorite right now is Saint Anything, the 5th Wave, the Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns, the Halo series by Alexandra Adornetto (shout out to Jasmine for suggesting this to me! SO GOOD), Tiger Lilly, and the Book Thief!


11) Winter > summer or in other words, cold weather > hot weather


12) Favorite color is black!


13) Favorite video games: Skyrim (DOVAKHIIN), Minecraft, Left 4 Dead, Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty Nazi Zombies, Sims, Kingdom Hearts, Ico, and Shadow of the Colossus! 


14) Favorite fruit is strawberries! 


15) favorite snack is bananas with peanut butter! 


16) I am part Italian and part Irish! 


17) My first book I had ever finished was one I wrote for Santa Clause when I was a little girl. I even illustrated the pages, and though it was ghetto, with me stapling the ends together, I was so proud of it! Took me a while to finish making it haha! 

18) When I was a kid, my biggest dream was to either become a princess or live off in the woods somewhere with horses, away from society! Two very contrasting dreams, huh? 

19) I'm the middle child in my family! For my birthday last year, my dad told me: Thanks for keeping things interesting for us! I'm the so-called 'troublemaker' in my family, since my sister and brother are practically saints. Fun stuff! 

20) My OTP is Axel and Roxas, from Kingdom Hearts! They were the pairing that got me into reading fan fiction, and eventually writing it! 

WELL NOW MY HEART HURTS I'M GOING TO GO EAT A LOT OF CHOCOLATE BYE


January 29, 2016


Hiya, lovelies!

So things are getting INTENSE! I'm adding last minute ideas while my editor is doing the full-blown content editing. I'm also searching and discovering all kinds of styles and formatting for interior designs, so that's a lot of fun. 

The cover I commissioned from the artist on deviantart didn't come through - she worked hard on it, she came with a lovely piece, but after editing, our styles just didn't mesh. So now I've found another artist who has a bit more experience particularly for book cover designs, so hopefully our ideas come across better! Again, the 1st artist was so nice to work with and so talented, it just turned out I was the first one to commission her to design a book cover, so the fact that this was both of our first times at this made it difficult to communicate what we thought. Hopefully this time things work out better! So far the studio's portfolio looks amazing! In fact, if you want to go take a look, here's their website: http://ebooklaunch.com/ebook-cover-design/

I requested a quote from their Dynamic package, and here are some of the books they've done:


I certainly think these are eye-catching, and according to the package details, they're ultimate goal is to correlate the cover design with essences from the story, so to me, of course, that seems so promising! And they're asking me a lot about my book, to get the gist of what they're working to market, so they've very professional.

So far, self-publishing in itself has been one hell of an experience! I'm still getting my foot in the water, but it's definitely one of those things that you have to learn hands on how to do. You get out there, get connections with all kinds of people (and hopefully discounts hehe), and you find out more and more what you need to produce your product. It's a lot of work, but for me, it's very enjoyable and so very worth it! 

My editor said that she will hopefully have my manuscript ready by March the 3rd, so I'm hoping to have my book out on Amazon and Barnes and Noble around the 20th of March. 

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT! PLEASE READ!

All throughout the month of February, I will be having a #TWISTEDGIVEAWAY !! It will officially begin this Sunday, so keep an eye out for it! I will make the announcement and give way more details about what's happening, I just wanted to give ya'll a heads up on what was coming! 

I hope everyone's having a wonderful day! 

Love, 
Sarah

Sunday, January 24, 2016

January 24, 2016

Hiya, lovelies!

So it's currently 5 AM, and I can't sleep on account of me and my best friends watching scary videos on YouTube a few hours ago (who needs sleep anyway?!), so I've spent some time revising Twisted, and I came up with a neat idea!

To kick off the publication of Twisted, I want to do a little giveaway! Remember how I mentioned I was only going to publish the ebook version? Well that's kind of changed - I'm going to print a small amount, too, and the lovely winners (I haven't decided how many yet) will receive FREE PRINT BOOKS. And a little note from me! I'll be reminding ya'll more of this the more organized I get, right now it's just an idea, but I'm excited for it - I think it'll be an awesome way to kick start the publication!

So yeah, keep an eye out for the giveaways in the future! I hope to publish Twisted in March, but I'll keep ya'll updated!

Love,
Sarah xx

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

January 12, 2016


Wow, so I almost made the common mistake of titling this in 2015, but caught myself at the last moment! 

Hiya, lovelies! Happy new years!! Another new year coming our way, full of opportunities and, of course, challenges yet to be overcome. How exciting! 

Boy do I have some news for you! The cover design for Twisted has just came in this morning, and though it still has things that need to be tweaked, it is absolutely amazing! I got goosebumps just from looking at it. Once the artist is completely finished with it, I'll give thanks to her properly on here in case any other self-publishing author is looking for a credible cover artist. 

My sister is currently critiquing the manuscript - and it's a bit nerve-wracking but exciting at the same time. Remember last time I said that she critiqued my work and what happened? That I rewrote the entire manuscript? Yeah, I certainly remember that. But luckily this time, there was improvement, so she's not calling for me rewriting anything - she's just helping me with with believablity and characterization, which is actually always fun. I'm so lucky that she's willing to set aside time and help me out on this - and she has been a great help!

The only nail-biter is that my content/developmental editing starts officially the 20th, so I have 8 days now to polish the manuscript the best I can until then. Eight. Days. God help me.

And just to top it off, I start classes on the 20th - so that must be a magical day of some sorts. But anyhow, I hope everyone's enjoying the new year - keep your head up, stay positive, love ya'll! :) 


Tuesday, December 29, 2015

December 29, 2015


Hiya, lovelies!

So I had a weird sense of...strangeness. I literally feel like I just posted my last blog post a couple days ago, but here it's been a couple weeks? It's insane how quickly time goes by around the holidays - wow! 

Anyhow, so I recently heard back from my editor about my editorial assessment, and she should be getting that to me around the 6th of January. I also contacted an amazing artist from deviantart to commission for both the ebook and print version of the book cover for Twisted - I've already chosen what stock photo I want for sure on the cover, I just need to essentially make it look cool and format it, hence is why I hired a professional - for a very reasonable price, may I add! I'm also going to go entirely through full content editing around the 20th of January, so I'm hoping to get Twisted out at the end of February! And then finally start working on Unstable.

I have an idea for how I want to start getting my book out there, and my original thought was to sell ebooks first, since it's going to cost to print books, and if my book flops, then I won't lose THAT much money. But I've decided that a lot of people probably still prefer actual books over ebooks, so I'm going to print a few at first to see how that goes and sell in both formats. It's honestly so much to think about, and I'm so thrilled to talk to my editor about the process in accurate detail so I don't make any huge mistakes. This is my first time going for this, so of course it's nerve wracking, but I really feel like I'm ready to get Twisted out there! 

I also have a new and professional twitter that ya'll might want to check out; I post about books I've read, about my personal blog, and more on books I will publish one day, so yeah - check it out @Sarah_Marie28

Other than that, I hope ya'll are having a great time celebrating your holidays! xx

Monday, December 14, 2015

December 14, 2015

Hiya lovelies!

I hope everyone is having an amazing day, I got to sleep in this morning and eat brownies for breakfast so, evidently, life is beautiful. I'm off for the winter break as of now, so no classes 'till mid January soo

FREEEDOOOOOOOM.

As for Twisted, I sent my completed manuscript to my editor for an editorial assessment, and she should get back to me by January 6. I'm so nervous but excited to get some professional outlook on what I have so far; I know I have things I need to fix, but once she gets back to me, I'll really know where I stand from a marketing perspective. Needless to say I haven't been able to even look at the manuscript since I sent it, though I've gotten a couple of new ideas I'm going to bring up with her when I hear back. My biggest issue is which route I should take when it comes to publishing, but once she finishes reading my manuscript she's going to give me her advice on that. I'll keep ya'll updated when I hear back from her and whatnot; I also sent the manuscript to my best friend (also my ex hahah) to read and he said, and I quote, "It's like when you go to the bookstore without any money and pick up a book to skim over, and you start reading it and realize that it's surprisingly really good, and you wished you had actually brought money." Soo there's a bit of positive feedback with him on that, though he has yet to finish reading it 😂

As always, feel free to hit me up on twitter @SmilinForYa! Or just email me from here. Hope ya'll are having a great day and enjoying the holidays!