Rose Red

Welcome Ink Drinkers,

Today I announce the release of my new novel, Rose Red.  Here's the synopsis:

You can't buy a girl!

But in the year 2214, you can. She can whip you into shape, design your diet, be your personal stylist, and turn you from geek to chic in just one year.  After buying a model at Sleeping Beauty Inc. your life will never be the same. 

But what will happen when the model Harrison buys isn't exactly what he bargained for?

Okay, it's not a new novel.  It's been around for over ten years, but now it's in paperback format.  It had a lot of very heavy editing in order to be prepared for its paperback edition.  So, if you enjoyed it the first time around, you'll really enjoy it the second time.

Within myself, I categorize my novels under two columns.  On one side, I write serious novels that have depth and complexity and on the other, I write stuff that's just fun, fun, and more fun.  It could also be described as some of my books have blood splatter and some don't.  I do like to get a bit of blood on the walls.  

The Serious Books:

His 16th Face

Behind His Mask: The First Spell Book

Hidden Library: The Second Spell Book

The Blood that Flows

Kiss of Tragedy

The Silly Books:

If I Tie U Down

Whenever You Want

Rose Red

A Little Like Scarlett: A Partial Autobiography

When I sell books in person, I tend to sell the serious ones better and I have a really hard time selling the silly ones.  However, as soon as my back is turned and people on the internet can do whatever they want without being watched, my silly books get picked up like crazy.  My two most popular books, 'Whenever You Want' and 'Kiss of Tragedy', don't match up in download figures.  WYW kicks the crap out of KOT and, honestly, KOT is better. 

And then there are the ARCs.  Those are the Advanced Reader Copies I give out to get reviews in the ebook stores.  I did quite well with His 16th Face.  A handful of people who didn't sign up for the ARC left sparkling reviews.  H16F is one of my very best books.  It's a delight.  I read it for fun.  However, the reader response for If I Tie U Down was poor.  There are scads of discrepancies.  This book gets more notice here, and that one gets more notice there.  This book was successful in this way and that one was a failure in that way.  WHY ALL THE DIFFERENCES?

We've actually hit on the reason authors use more than one pen name.  The audience grows to expect certain things from their author.  People who have read Whenever You Want and enjoyed it will LOVE If I Tie U Down.  They will be delighted from cover to cover.  However, if you're expecting mind-bending creativity, you'll have to wait for If Diamonds Could Talk (the sequel to His 16th Face).  Otherwise, you'll have to enjoy a romantic comedy that asks for nothing from you.  

That's what Rose Red is.  It's mildly creative.  I use unusual elements to bring the story together and make strange things work alongside each other.  But at its heart, it's a warm story about how much a woman is worth even if she costs a fortune and never makes a penny.  

It's available now on Amazon and Smashwords.  It will appear on more and more sites as the days go on.  

Here's the Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1990217036/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Rose+Red+by+Stephanie+Van+Orman&qid=1626216232&sr=8-1

And here's the link to the YouTube trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoz1GJjn4so

Enjoy!  Love is all around the world, especially if you like to drink ink!

 

Greedy Little Me

This is going to be a strange post.  It has come to my attention that people do not know how to shop for me.  Sooo, even though this is bananas, I'm going to write a list of shopping dos and don'ts for me.  

Now I'm going to give you a list of things I like and a list of things I don't like.  Don't mix them up!

Yarn

Pens

Empty Books

Suckable Candies

Pickles

Olives

Socks

Molds

Second List:

Lavender Soap

Cookies

Perfume

Earrings

Books

Gift Certificates

Concert tickets

Spa Vouchers

There!  All done!  I hope you enjoyed the sideways humor of this post.    

The Little Bookstore that Couldn't

A little over a year ago, I started doing shifts as a resident writer at the Askew Creek Book Shop.  It was a tiny bookshop in a market that sold independent novels and used books.  That's a picture of what my shelf looked like at one time.

So, as some of you have seen on my FaceBook page, it failed and it's closing its doors.

I feel quite a lot of grief that it failed and I hope there is another opportunity waiting around the corner.  I had so many plans.  I was going to set up a TV that played trailers for six of my books on a loop.  I was going to print my daughter's children's book and sell it there around Christmas.  

To help me say goodbye, I thought I'd write my top three memories from working at the bookshop.  

The time Carol and Angela taught me how to sell.  Neither Carol nor Angela work at the bookshop.  They work at surrounding shops.  I'm good at selling things normally, but selling my own books in person is a bit hard because people really want a few degrees of separation between them and their author.  That's especially the case when people read escapist fiction.  But Carol and Angela let me practice pitching my books to them and both bought a book when I was finished.  It was a sweet day!

The time Eliza told me that participating in a community writing exercise was beneath me.  I have always hated creative writing workshops.  I'm not interested in short story writing projects.  I want to write novels that have vast opportunities for plot twists and loops.  Short stories don't have to be predictable and I enjoy reading them from time to time, but I have no interest in writing them myself.  Eliza is a really crabby old writer, which makes her venom on my behalf as sweet as sugar.  I loved hearing her dismissive voice letting me off the hook.

The last one was something that didn't happen much at the market.  Most of the customers were seniors.  I still sold them my books, but one time I had a couple of women in their 20s come in.  As soon as they walked in, I said, "You two look like my demographic."  I sold one of them a copy of Kiss of Tragedy and she was so nervous about buying it from the author and getting a signed copy that she dropped her money three times.  In that tiny market, in that small corner, I looked like a real author to her.  I'm not sure if I've had many of those kinds of experiences in the flesh.  I received over 700 comments for Kiss of Tragedy online where people have gone into raptures about how great it is.  But this was in person.  It was an especially wonderful moment.

And now I'll only be there for two more shifts before it's over.  All my books will be pulled from the shelves on May 19th.  I really do hope there's another opportunity around the corner.  I'd like another opportunity.  

If I Tie U Down

I know I was supposed to release Rose Red before If I Tie U Down, but I shift between projects and it turned out that this one got finished first.  I am so excited about this book!  

I don't always write a contemporary romance novel, but when I do... it turns out better than the last one.  My last contemporary romance novel was Whenever You Want.  Right now, that is hands-down my most popular novel.  Yeah, it's a riot.  Everyone loves it.  If I Tie U Down is better.

It's the story of Shannon and Fletch.  She's a closet vandal who cannot resist pranks, jests, and graffiti.  He's a musician who does everything from playing the drums in a rock band to thwacking a wooden block in the orchestra.  They are not supposed to meet...  But when they do, it irritates every last person who knows them.  And with that... a romantic comedy is born.

My personal acquaintances will have questions about the cover.  I'm here to answer them.  Yes, my daughter drew the cover for me.  She is a brilliant graphic illustrator.  She drew Shannon so quickly it was frightening, but Fletch was a process.  She kept bringing it back to me and I kept saying he needed to look better.  I love how he's hanging upside down.  

Long ago, I used to live in a really scary part of Edmonton and this book is set in that world.  I like it because if you were riding the bus in Edmonton, you could be sitting next to Fletch and Shannon, and you wouldn't know it.  Everyone who lives in that area is so mysterious and polar.  They could be serving food at the soup kitchen, reporting in at the halfway house, working at the peepshow, working at City Hall, going to the Church of Scientology, selling lip balm, or returning library books.  It's a wild place, but you don't get to meet any of those people in the story... just Shannon and Fletch.  The adventures they have together make a romance that doesn't have anything to do with being romanced by a billionaire or any other popular trope when it comes to romance novels.  This is something new.

I haven't decided on a release date.  As I have said before, I cannot work with release dates.  I just have to do my own thing, so I'll drop it one day.  Keep an eye out for it.

What's New and Exciting

Over the past six months or so I've been offered three publishing deals with android apps that host novels.  

I'd rather not say the names of the apps I rejected, so I'll leave that blank.  The first one I rejected because the contract was so bad, it was unredeemable.  If you do a google search for that android app, one of the first things to pop up is an article titled, "Is ##### a scam?"  After reading their contract, I think it's less a scam than just a really bad deal.  Read the fine print, kids.

The second one I rejected was a huge app but it was unavailable in Canada.  I can't work with someone if I can't see what's happening with my story because I can't install their app.  

The third one was Hinovel.  Their contract was reasonable and I have been wanting to dip my feet into the android app market to see how my novels could do, so I signed with them.  A long time ago, I used to enjoy great success as a serial novelist, who posted one chapter a week.  I can still see myself doing really well at that if there was a platform where the readers were my kind of ink drinkers.  My books haven't been there that long yet, so we'll wait to see what kind of success can be had there.  

I was also nominated for the Whitney Awards for His 16th Face, but when the finalists came out, my name wasn't among them.  I started to wonder if that was a thing worth pursuing.  I could get Hidden Library nominated this year if I wanted to.  If I felt good about it.  I didn't feel very good about my experience from the 2020 awards.  Did I need to be a finalist in order to feel good about it?  I decided that no, I didn't need to be a finalist to feel good about it.  But I did need something, even if it was just a lone number one in a sea of zeroes.  I didn't even get a form letter saying, "Congratulations on your book.  Even though it was not selected as a finalist, our committee enjoyed reading it, and we look forward to seeing more of your work in the future."  They didn't inform me that I didn't get chosen.  There was nothing.  None of the judges reviewed my book on any platform.  Sales didn't spike when it was nominated.  Nothing.  

As an independent novelist, there are a lot of doors slammed in my face.  That's what I'm talking about when I mention the sea of zeroes.  That's the case for most novelists most of the time.  Very few novelists publish more than three books because it becomes very obvious very quickly that there isn't much money to be had selling your books.  It's a better gig to market services to would-be authors who want to be famous.  Ads?  Newsletters?  Need editorial services?  Need cover art?  Need a personal assistant?  It's really easy to spend more on your book than you make.  

Don't get me wrong, I'm not having a pity party.  I became an independent novelist knowing that it wasn't a good gig.  There are a lot of good days that don't have anything to do with whether or not I'm acknowledged for my genius.  I like cutting book trailers.  I like designing covers and doing the graphic design work that goes into making ads.  I like writing.  I like editing.  I'm happy most days.  

And yesterday, I finished the first draft for If I Tie U Down.  That's what's new and exciting!

The New Books for 2021

I told everyone I was done with release dates and I am so very done with release dates.  The truth is that I am always writing.  When I work on a project, I know I'm getting closer to finishing it.  I feel it as soon as I finish the first draft.  I whisper to myself that as soon as the groundwork is laid out, I'm close to finishing.  Then one magical day, it's finished.

One time, I turned to my husband and said, "I finished Where Her Garden Grows." (the first title of Hidden Library)

And he said, "Just like that?"

And I nodded.  "Just like that."

I had finished the first draft.  The end was so close.  Little did I know I would replace two whole chapters, cut another chapter completely, and add another plot arch.  I even changed the title.  It's hard to say exactly what needs to be done to a book in order to proclaim it complete.  The sanding that must take place has to continue until the words are smooth.

With that said, I'd like to tell y'all what I've laid out for the coming year.  First up:

Rose Red

Rose Red is a book I wrote ten or eleven years ago.  There's an old version of it on fictionpress.com.  It has 96 reviews.  Even though it has been that long, I still get fan mail for it occasionally.  It's a weird story, about how in the future a man can buy a woman.  It's full of renovations, cows, deadly diseases, hot models, princesses, and strangeness.  And it's only 60,000 words.  Once I learned how to prepare a manuscript for print, I needed to practice, so I decided this was a perfect project to polish for a paperback.  I thought it was in great shape because I still had people writing in to tell me how much they enjoyed it.

I would hate to tell my fans that they are wrong, but fans... I had to rip half that book down to the bone when I began preparations for publication.  

Ugh... words everywhere.

Okay, so maybe my fans weren't wrong... it was a fun book, but after I got my hands on it, I made it SO much better.  I've actually been working on it in my spare time for months and I can see the end on the horizon.  It's definitely coming out in 2021.

This is a trailer I cut to advertise it.  I've never posted a video to my blog before.  Let's see if it runs smoothly.  It's the cover reveal:

Onto the next book:

If Diamonds Could Talk

This is the sequel to His 16th Face.  I wrote the whole first draft last summer when no one could go anywhere.  Then I also finished the second draft, still in the summer, because no one could go anywhere.  Now I'm working on the third and I have high hopes that it will be my final draft.  Let's be honest, when you're working with characters you've already established, there is nothing in this world simpler than to write a second book.

I would hate to give a spoiler for His 16th Face.  It's one of my favorite books.  It goes like this: Beth was dying of heart disease until Christian mysteriously saved her life.  After three years of living as his ward, the only thing she knows for certain is that Christian Henderson is not his real name.  Who is he?  Why does she love him completely when he hides so much from her?

If Diamonds Could Talk has been a great project, because I've never written anything weirder.  It is very weird.  I'm actually terrified to release it to the public because of how smart the reader is going to have to be to understand it.  When I work on it, the words spin and twirl.  It's a very brave project.  Sometimes it's nicer just to write a romance novel where two people meet and fall in love and the rules are rules that everyone understands.  If Diamonds Could Talk is not like that.  I'm scared to death I won't be able to connect it to the readers who will truly appreciate the imagination to break everything we understand.

I'll do a cover reveal for this when I'm on round two or three of editing.  The cover is enchanting.

If I Tie You Down

This is the romance novel I've been waiting for.  It's not just the romance novel I want to write, but it's also the romance novel I want to read.  Cutting to the quick, I have read a lot of romance novels.  Nurse/doctor romance novels where there is never enough blood or emergency.  Office romance novels where the author has never set foot inside an office and doesn't know how things go down.  Farm romance novels where the hook might be baking your own bread and not the man at all.  Emergency romance novels where you're stuck in the woods and if you don't strip down, you'll die of hypothermia.  Or perhaps the most common, the one where a billionaire buys love.  I really don't like the billionaire ones.  They're gross.

No, no, no.  I showed the first chapter of this to a publishing company and they offered me a deal... which I turned down.  I gotta do things my way.

It's about Shannon and Fletch.  She kidnapped him with her friend, Natalie, only to discover that he was not the man they were trying to kidnap.  After handcuffing him in a deserted camp kitchen, Shannon and Natalie fight with unconscious consequences.  The book begins when Shannon wakes up, handcuffed to Fletch in the camp kitchen with Natalie nowhere in sight.  She has no idea who Fletch is, but he knows who she is.  She's famous for breaking hearts and ruining lives.  If she ever wants to get out, she's got some explaining to do.

So, I was going through bits of my old, discarded writing.  I read the title, had no idea what it was, and opened it up.  I read the first chapter and squealed.  There was no way I even reviewed it before I got snapped up to do something else.  Immediately, I wrote two more chapters.  I LOVE SHANNON AND FLETCH.  Then I wrote three more chapters.  Then I wrote MORE!  

I really hope I get to release this in 2021.  It's what everyone needs to cheer up!  Wish me luck and when I say that, I don't mean 'Good luck'.  I mean 'All the luck in the world.'

Hidden Library: The Second Spell Book Launch

It's snowing today. My cat sits by the window and growls at the falling snow.  I guess he doesn't remember the last time it snowed.

Today is release day for Hidden Library.  I started writing this book five or six years ago.  When I wrote Behind His Mask, I had no thought of it being a series and, truthfully, I don't know if there will be another Spell Book.  I started writing it thinking about a girl, who was like Emi, but not Emi.  What would happen to her if she had to make a similar choice?

The back of the book is not a synopsis.  It's a character reveal.  Here's how it goes: