return to me blurb
A fatal accident. A parallel world. Second chances don’t come often.
Death has never been far from Lana. In a previous life, her husband Frank died from a heart condition at thirty. In this new world where she’s known as Alannah Walker, it’s Tristan by her side as husband, and he had a heart operation as a child. But that’s where the similarities end between them. Born Frank Walters, Tristan hides his past under a new name. His relationship with his wife, Alannah, fraught with anger. Alannah has seemed like a different person since the car accident, and lessons of the past have taught him not to trust too easily. Will Tristan and Lana learn enough from past mistakes to give them a second chance at love? Be transported to another world on a breathtaking ride into the unknown, where two lovers will come to find the true meaning of forever. Return to Me is a heart wrenching tale of love, loss, and rediscovery that will draw you in from the very first page. Buy Return to Me now and lose yourself in a world where second chances make anything possible.
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I'm very excited to have begun my publishing journey again and re-releasing Return to Me as an indie author.
This is the first book I ever wrote and I love it so much. If you're a fan of the TV show Quantum Leap or the movie Sliding Doors, then this is the one for you. It is now available as a Ebook, Paperback and on Kindle Unlimited. The first book I ever wrote was a romance novel based on a dream I had where my husband looked the same, but I knew he was a different man. When I woke up I couldn’t get the dream out of my head and so my novel Return to Me was born about widowed Lana who dies and is transported to a parallel universe to be reunited with her husband, only to find him a different man.
I spent three years working on this novel. My dream was that it would be a stand-alone contemporary for Avon. While I was very passionate about the project, very soon the writing process became like work and writing was a struggle. Finally after three years, and numerous drafts based on critiques from my writing group, I realised I was finished. Now that I had decided that my novel was complete and that it was the best I could make it, the next step was to submit it, however I was suffering a crisis of faith. I wasn’t sure whether my book was any good. I decided that this was my practice book, the one that allowed me to learn the craft of writing, and now it was time to work on something else, but I still always loved the romance genre and had ideas that I wanted to explore. After watching the way that the genre was transformed and embraced digital publishing I kept thinking about my languishing manuscript. I thought about self publishing it, but wasn’t sure whether it was any good. I re-read it after 10 years and I decided that it had to be kept hidden from the world. Another year passed and I was doing Nano and after five years of attempting to finish it and reach 50,000 words in a month, I finally did it. On the forum threads I read about publishers seeking Nano novelists to submit their romance novels. I read my manuscript again and while I noticed its flaws, I also noticed its heart. I prevaricated, but finally decided to bite the bullet and submit Return to Me. All the years that I had spent on it had devoid me of any objectivity about its merit. I sent my manuscript to my agent who submitted it to publishers and soon two offers followed. I decided on Momentum and within a few months my book was out in the world. Now I needed to write my next romance novel and within six months I had a completed manuscript and in July 2014 my second romance novel Hollywood Dreams was published. It seemed miraculous that I had established a career as a romance author. I think about the 11 years that my manuscript languished in my metaphorical bottom drawer until I finally decided to give it a shot. While I think waiting so long was the right thing for me, I also learnt the most important lesson of all: ‘to submit and get rejected is better than not to have submitted at all. This post was previously published on AusRomToday. I have written a guest blog post on My Book Addiction and there is also a giveaway of my novel Return to Me. All you have to do is comment to enter. The giveaway will run from 19 October to the 26 October 2013. Here's a teaser of my blog post.
'Writing with the door Open by Mae Archer One of the best pieces of writing advice I’ve read was from Stephen King. In his memoir On Writing he states that you need to ‘Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.’ What he means by this is that you first write for yourself. You write the sort of stories you want to read, the stories that only you can tell. When you’re first writing you shouldn’t be thinking about the reader or the publication process. Instead you just need to let the story tell itself.' To read more click here. Return to Me is officially out in the world. Yesterday was the publication date and as you can guess I've been madly Googling myself. So far I have received three reviews. You can read them here on Goodreads. Two of them were four stars so that's put a spring in my step. I know that there are book ranking systems I can check, but I haven't found them yet. Feel like nothing much will be happening with it at this early stage and that I'll be disappointed if I'm ranked 1,000,001. I have written a few blog posts and have some columns in progress in my efforts to garner publicity, so that's been keeping me busy. Have also enjoyed making new friends on Facebook and joining groups where I'm meeting some interesting people. It's also been an experience seeing my novel on the Momentum website here. It seems I have written a paranormal, speculative romance novel. I knew it was paranormal, but I had to look up what speculative meant. Go figure! In other news I have an erotic story accepted with Clan Destine Press and I need to start editing it. So that's on my to do list this week. The only way this will be done is if I leave the house so I get away from the internet and from Google. Wish me luck!
A Koala mailbox I saw on my wanderings
Have been very busy behind the scenes getting Return to Me ready for publication. Received the cover and I'm absolutely in love with it. Captures the mood of the novel so beautifully. Will hopefully be able to make it public in a few weeks. Had to do copyedits and now it's moving down the line toward publication. Was so nice to see the layout of how it will look when it comes out. Now I'm counting down until the 1st of September. I've been slowly chipping away at my second novel. I'm hoping now that I've cleared a few other obligations I will be able to immerse myself in writing. I'm really loving this new book and the characters in it. I'm also loving having access to technology to create this world. I'm using Pinterest and have a secret board where I have images that are helping me world build. There are images of where my characters live, what they're wearing, and what they look like. I also love Google Maps which allows me to research routes and how long it takes to get from A to B. Writing a new book is always so daunting, but I'm now at the point where it feels like it's writing itself. I completed a 40,000 word crappy draft that gave me the bones of the story and now I've started an actual draft. I find that I write by layering and revising over and over the same scenes. It almost feels like I'm building a Lego wall as I reinforce the world in detail that brings it to life. But once this first act is complete the foundation will be set for the rest of the book. For now I'm having the best fun and am carrying a delicious feeling of anticipation as I count down. Only 18 days until Return to Me is out. I’m still completing the Return to Me edits. It’s been slow going because I’ve been ill. It’s that time of the year in Melbourne when the weather is cold and drizzly and all the colds and flus are doing the rounds.
I’m up to page 129 out of 200 so I am slowly chipping away. My editor has been wonderful and identifying inconsistencies and tightening up the writing. Thankfully there have been no structural edits, it’s just been straight copy editing. I also found out the publication date, which is September 2013. That’s right, it’s only two months away. My head is spinning at the pace of it all. This is the wonderful thing about digital publishing. Everything is so much faster. The cover is still in process so I’ll see that soon. That’s when it all comes to life. When you actually see the cover and how it’s going to look. I’m really excited about that part. During one of the weeks when I wasn’t ill I completed two chapters of my next romance novel and I can’t wait to finish the Return to Me copyedits and be able to immerse myself in this new world. I have a deadline and need to complete it ideally by September so I’ll be writing away frantically. I’ll also be using this blog to keep myself updated so expect more frequent updates. I used to have a widget that displayed the wordcount and might revisit that so that I really keep up a cracking pace. Nothing like letting the world know what you’re doing to make you accountable. So I'm very excited to be starting this blog and my career as a romance writer. I'm still waiting on the contract for my romance novel so I don't have the publication information to share, so I thought I'd talk instead about how it all happened.
I wrote my romance novel Return to Me years ago and after being in a writing group and getting it polished, I put it in my bottom drawer. While I told myself that I didn't want to be a romance writer, the real reason I didn't submit is because I was scared. This was the first novel that I had ever written and it took 3 years of hard work and a lot of sweat and tears to complete it. I was too scared to actually go through with submission and see what would happen. I started working on other things and forgot it about it. A few years later when I saw the changing publishing landscape with digital imprints springing up and self published authors succeeding I revisited my first novel. I printed it off, read it all again, and decided that it wasn't good enough. Back it went into that bottom drawer. Then I was participating in Nano, ideas started flowing about things I might want to write, and I saw that publishers were seeking Nano participants to submit straight after they completed their manuscripts. Now I knew my novel was pretty polished so I did an impulsive thing and submitted. Suddenly it was real. I had actually submitted my novel. There might be a possibility of it being accepted, and there might be the possibility of it being rejected. So I contacted my agent and told her what I did and we went from there. She submitted it to a few publishers and pretty soon we had a publisher expressing interest in making an offer, but they requested some revisions first. I started revising my novel and we got the green light and a real life actual offer. I did it. I was actually going to have this first novel published. Then I got a few rejections, and then another offer. I was now in the position of being able to choose who I would publish with. I chose PanMacMillan's Momentum. So now I'm waiting on the contract and all the fine print. In the meantime I've started my second romance novel that I'm really excited about writing. It's an idea I've had for years and years and it's wonderful to finally see it come to life. |
AuthorAuthor of Return to Me, Hollywood Dreams and Vintage Dreams. Short story is published in the anthology Little Raven Two by Little Raven Publishing. Pen name for Amra Pajalic. Archives
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