February 7, 2016

Hiya, lovelies!

So I realized that having the giveaway strictly through twitter may limit some people from being able to enter, since not everyone has twitter.

So I've decided to broaden the horizon!

I know at one point of time, almost everyone had a facebook, so a while back I had created a page for my writing and whatnot on there!

And as for instagram, that's the hip and happenin' thing as of now.

So, this week's giveaway will take place with twitter, facebook, and instagram!

All you have to do is hashtag #TWISTEDGIVEAWAY2 (yeah I added the two, I know, how creative) and it would be more helpful for me to find your post if you include my username somewhat. With twitter, ya'll were good with including my username, so there's no issue there. But on facebook, all you have to do is like my page HERE and post a comment including the hashtag! For instagram, you can post a picture of the hashtag written on paper or something, or even post a cool picture of, say, Batman and all you have to do is include the hashtag in your summary or whatever of the photo you post! I'd prefer if you tagged me or included my username @scarah29 only because I'm not up to date with instagram, so I'm afraid I won't find everyone's entries just by looking through the hashtag. So I guess we'll see!

And if you use none of these, you can just shoot me an email at sreeves28@gmail.com !

Also, I thought it would be more helpful if the day before I choose the winner, Thursday, I post a list of all the people entered, just so someone can give me a heads up if I've missed their entry and whatnot!

But anyhow, the giveaway IS BEGINNING TODAY! TWEET, COMMENT ON FACEBOOK, OR GO THROUGH INSTAGRAM TO BE AUTOMATICALLY ENTERED FOR RECEIVING TWISTED AS A PRINT BOOK WHEN IT FIRST BECOMES PUBLISHED!!

Hope ya'll are having a wonderful day!
Love,
Sarah

WINNER OF THE 1st #TWISTEDGIVEAWAY

Hiya, lovelies!

So today is the day I randomly chose a winner for the #TWISTEDGIVEAWAY! I took a piece of paper, assigned everyone entered a number, wrote them down, cut them apart, then randomly picked!

And the 1st giveaways winner is....

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@lenka_n130 IS THE WINNER!!! CONGRATS BABE!!! <3 <3 <3 

SO EXCITED TO ALREADY GIVE YOU THE FREE BOOK BUT I MUST WAIT 'TILL IT'S ACTUALLY PUBLISHED! 

But I'll be getting a hold of you close to the publication date, March 20th, so I can send it your way and whatnot. So so excited! 

Another giveaway will be coming this Sunday, so ya'll will have another chance of entering for the free book! I'll announce the details then, but until then, I hope ya'll are having a lovely day! 

Love,

Sarah

January 3, 2016

Hiya, lovelies!

So this is day 3 of the #TWISTEDGIVEAWAY and if you haven't already participated, I highly suggest you do because hey, it's super easy - all you have to do is tag my username, @SmilinForYa on twitter with the hashtag and BOOM! You're entered for a random chance to win a FREE book! I mean, who doesn't want a free book??

Alright, so I know lots of people who wouldn't be interested, but if you are, then why not give it a try!

I'm currently struggling with my classes at school - two online, which I initially thought would be a blessing but have turned out to be quite the opposite - and getting accustomed to having a job, which I recently acquired. It's nice to keep busy, but it's certainly a change I'm going to have to get used to!

I'm waiting for the final edits to come back from my editor, and in the meantime, am brainstorming on a last minute idea to implement into the book - I think ya'll will like it. It's not something I normally do, so you'll see what I mean when you...see it. I never did it often with my fics, and I was skeptical at the idea at first, but the more thought I gave it, the more I felt like my story needed - and once I started doing it, I just couldn't stop.

Story of my life.

One of my biggest struggles when 1st writing Twisted was the constant worry that it would be too long. Because of this, I was very careful of how much I wrote in a particular scene. But when I finished the book and realized how much shorter it was going to be when compared to Unstable, which as I said, will be MUCH longer than Twisted, I tried adding more to the word count but couldn't add much. When I first started writing the book, traditional publishing was still in mind, albeit skeptically, and Stephen King has stated often about new upcoming authors that their first book should be around 40,000 words - more or less is usually frowned upon in a market, when introduced to a brand new author. So I tried to scale my book on that, and when I made the decision of going indie publishing, word count suddenly didn't matter in that aspect. So although that was a relief off my chest, it was also another worry because I wanted both books to be equal in length, but oh well!

By now there are two days left!! I will randomly choose the winner on Friday, at 5:00PM - no later or sooner! So get involved as much as you can before then!

Love,
Sarah

February 1, 2016

Hiya, lovelies!

As I'm sure ya'll know, the #TWISTEDGIVEAWAY is still ongoing until this upcoming Friday - but once again, in case anyone has yet to see the details, if you want a free print version of #Twisted when it publishes (in March 20), entering this giveaway will automatically put you in a slot to be randomly selected!! All you have to do is tweet #TWISTEDGIVEAWAY with my username included, and I'll add you in the box! Next week I'm probably going to do a giveaway off the platform of twitter, but to start off, it seems to be working fine!

Also, so yesterday the cover design concept was shown to me for the book. The studio works really fast, and above all, so SO professionally! I am so blown away by the cover - how they made it in two days is beyond me? However, as of now they only have the ebook format completed, they need additional information for the printed version, but that may take more time for me to put together. But as a bonus they included a 3-d model of what it should look like!

But as I mentioned earlier, if anyone is looking for a reliable, professional, and efficient studio for book design covers - I highly recommend them! They were attentive to what I wanted for my book, and used their marketing expertise to bring my vague idea to life! 

And time sure is ticking down! Just another month and a half before the book gets published!! To say I'm excited is surely an understatement! I still can't believe it's even happening. It feels like just a few months ago, I was still that teenage girl in high school staying up far too late to work on fan fiction! My how the years have passed. Ha! 

Anyhow, if you haven't already participated in the giveaway, I encourage you to do so! Who doesn't want a free book!?! I hope ya'll are having a great day! 

Love,

Sarah

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

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