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What a difference a year can make: Celebrating Diva’s one-year anniversary
It’s hard to believe my debut novel, DIVA IN THE DUGOUT, came out a year ago today. Yet it did.
My book baby has been out there for 12 months. 365 days.
Wow. It’s been a crazy year.
In its 365 days “in the wild,” it’s gotten some attention. Among the notice: six reviews on Amazon (nothing below a 3-star) and 24 ratings on Goodreads (3.79 average). A 3.79 average might not seem that impressive, but then I remind myself that some of my favorite authors’ books have similar scores.
No matter how beloved they are, no author can please everyone. DIVA garnered my first one-star review. I know, I know. I’m not supposed to read the reviews. Confession: I did it anyway. It was thoughtful and I can respect the opinions it expressed.
Back to DIVA’s wild year. It hovered on various Amazon bestseller lists for months. I learned to love that “Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Sports” designation. “Kindle ebooks > Romance > Sports” is also pretty sweet.
DIVA also garnered attention from my publisher. When Turquoise Morning Press celebrated its 2013 Best of TMP this summer, I was recognized three times.
It received a nod in the 2013 TMP Readers’ Choice awards, too. Ultimately, it didn’t win—but like all the movie stars say, it was an honor just to be nominated. A nomination meant that enough readers enjoyed DIVA so much that they thought it deserved to be included on the list.
And when I decided to enter the RITA competition, it became a print book. It’s definitely selling better in its ebook form, but it was a thrill to hold my book baby in my hands.
(No, it didn’t receive a RITA nomination. Too bad. You only get one shot at “best first book.”)
My debut isn’t perfect. I know that. For example, I didn’t resolve Dave’s issues with his father. I realized it on one of my read-throughs and figured my editor would call me on it. When she didn’t, I let it slide. That turned out to be a mistake. More than one reader has pointed out the omission.
Another confession: I set the story in Texas because I wanted to sell to Harlequin American and so many of their stories are set there. I picked a part of Texas I’d driven through on my move from Indiana to Arizona, but still…I should stick with writing a place I know. That’s why most of my stories are set in either Arizona (like BEAUTY AND THE BALLPLAYER, SLIDING INTO HOME and the upcoming BREAKING ALL THE RULES) or the Midwest (HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS and BLIND DATE BRIDE). I lived the first 28 years of my life in northern Indiana and have been in northern Arizona for the last 15.
Still, DIVA is an entertaining read. I fell in love with Dave and Mel, and their daughter Tara. I hope you will, too.
Get DIVA IN THE DUGOUT: Turquoise Morning Press, Smashwords, All Romance Ebooks, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and iTunes.
Celebrating Diva’s one-year anniversary: Exclusive excerpt for newsletter subscribers
My debut novel, DIVA IN THE DUGOUT, will be one year old Saturday.
How can I mark this momentous occasion? Well, I have a few blog posts scheduled. I also got the okay to release the rarely seen deleted first chapter—in full.
You can find a My Sexy Saturday snippet here, but the whole story will be available only to folks who subscribe to my newsletter.
Sign up now. I’ll send out a newsletter with a link to the password-protected page on my website a week from Friday.
I apparently don’t know the meaning of “regular”
So much for attempts to post here on a regular schedule. I have many excellent reasons for slacking—some of which I plan to blog about in the near future.
For now, know I’m neck-deep in edits for BREAKING ALL THE RULES, my spring 2015 Turquoise Morning Press release.
Yes, I prefer to make edits by hand. Maybe it makes me a dinosaur, but I see things differently on paper. Besides, it feels more real somehow. I love the heft of a pile of manuscript pages.
There’s only one problem with editing this way: Sometimes—OK, more often than I care to admit—I can’t read my hand-written scribbles.
Ahem. The trick, of course, is to finish edits and get them back in my typewritten manuscript quickly enough that I can still remember what I was trying to say.
That’s the goal, anyway.
I’ve slowly been whittling down the to-be-edited pile. As of Saturday afternoon, it’s officially a shorter stack than the already-edited pile.
It’s the small victories, right? I need a few of those in my life right now.
The cellphone is insidious
Cellphone is one word now—at least according to the Associated Press. And since AP style is drilled into my head at the day job, one word it shall stay, even if it drives me up the wall.
The AP also recently changed style on under way. After two decades of swearing “under way” was two words in all uses except nautical ones—as in underway flotilla, whatever that is—it’s cropping up in stories as “underway”—and … you guessed it … making me crazy.
Enough about AP style—or lack thereof. I wanted to talk about cellphones for a moment. Coconino County, where I live, recently passed a ban on most cellphone use while driving. (Hands-free devices are an exception.)
What’s that you say? A great idea?
There was a time I’d have agreed with you. I remember when I got my first cellphone, circa Y2K. I swore I would NEVER talk and drive. I’d pull off the road to answer and/or make a call.
For a while, that’s what I did. But as time passed, the phone’s newness wore off and I developed new habits.
I found myself answering the ringing phone on the road. Then I started actually making calls from a moving vehicle. A few months ago, I caught myself checking the screen when I heard it beep with a text message. (I didn’t answer it, just quickly read the preview on my lock screen—but even that made the Boyfriend yell. Like he never uses his phone while driving …)
Even worse, when I’m sitting at a stoplight, out comes the phone so I can scroll through tweets or Facebook posts … or take a quick peek at how well my latest release is doing on Amazon.
Hey now—I never said they were good habits.
They are, however, habits I’ll have to curb—and fast. The county’s ban takes effect in a few short weeks. Maybe I’ll start keeping my purse in the back seat instead of the passenger seat. I’m just afraid that when it starts ringing, it’ll drive me nuts.
Speaking of Amazon, I woke up this morning (well before my alarm) to an email advertising not one but two of my books. Beauty is No. 1 on the list; Diva is No. 4.
I love it when Amazon advertises my own books to me. Hopefully it’s an indication they’re being pushed on other folks, too.
That’s what I’m assuming, anyway, despite the well-known dangers about what happens when you assume.
SLIDING INTO HOME is getting its fair share of attention, too. Earlier this week, it received not one but two reviews on Amazon. One was a four-star, one was a five-star.
The highlights:
While reading this book I felt happy, I laughed out loud. One of my favorite quotes is “ So help me, if you apologize for kissing me, I will stab you with the scissors that came with my new desk set.” “ I wouldn’t dream of it.” …
This is my first book by Arlene Hittle and it definitely will not be my last. It’s a very fast paced story, I couldn’t put it down. I read this book in less than one day! Arlene is a very talented author!!
— from a 5-star review by Bre
I really liked this book. It was funny and romantic and sexy. Greg struggles with all these emotions about his relationship with his father. He feels like he is always in his father’s shadow and can’t find a way to get out from underneath it. Jenn is sweet and really like Greg. She wants to find a way to help him. They have great chemistry. The book was very well written and the characters were engaging. I will defiantly be reading the other books in this series.
— from a 4-star review by badkat17us
Now when I pull up SLIDING’s Amazon page, DIVA and BEAUTY pop up as “also-buys.” Not too shabby, I’d say.
Your turn: Do you have any bad cellphone habits? How do you break yourself of them?
Where to find Sliding Into Home
Please allow me to present my newest book baby, Sliding into Home
Ta-da!
This is Book 3 in my All Is Fair In Love and Baseball series, and it tackles Arizona Condors first baseman Greg Bartlesby’s story. (You knew there had to be a good reason for his run-in with the law in Diva in the Dugout, right? Here’s where you find out why he acts the way he does.)
The blurb:
Will a sexy attorney help the Condors’ rebel first baseman outrun his father’s shadow—or merely strip him of his illusions?
More than anything, Arizona Condors first baseman Greg Bartlesby wants to make his own name in the big leagues. Too bad being the son of MLB legend Jake “Big Man” Bartlesby makes that impossible. Even worse? His attempts to differentiate himself from his old man more often land him in legal trouble. His latest brush with the law brings him in contact with an attorney he’s met before—as a dancer at the club where he was arrested…for protecting her.
Jenn Simpson isn’t a stripper—not that she can convince her bonehead client her twin is the one doing the dancing. When Greg offers her sister a job at his father’s Foundation, Jenn is the one who accepts, at her sister’s urging. She soon discovers she likes the work—and her new boss. As she and Greg forge a friendship and more, she knows it’s time to convince him she’s not who he thinks. But when his father’s hospitalization compels Greg to fast-track his leap to the majors by capitalizing on Big Jake’s fame, it might be too late for her to expunge the record.
Here’s one of my favorite passages, from near the beginning of the book:
It came out yesterday and you can find it at your favorite e-retailer.
iTunes: Sliding Into Home – Arlene Hittle
Happy reading!
My Sexy Saturday: Beauty’s release
Isn’t “Beauty’s Release” the title of an Anne Rice book? Haven’t read it, but I was in high school when I first heard of it. I remember being intrigued by the mere idea of her Sleeping Beauty Trilogy, written under the pen name A.N. Roquelaure. I’d just read—and fallen in love with—THE VAMPIRE LESTAT, and wanted to read all the Anne Rice books I could get my hands on.
You can imagine that, in small-town Indiana in the late 1980s, the Beauty trilogy wasn’t readily available on the library shelf. I wonder if they have it even now …
Ahem. File that under “jaunt down memory lane.” Funny how the strangest things send you down that road, eh? When I typed in my blog post title, I was off.
Welcome to the My Sexy Saturday in which I get to celebrate the release of BEAUTY AND THE BALLPLAYER. BEAUTY, which went live Thursday, has been many things to me — my first manuscript set somewhere outside the Midwest (in Flagstaff, Ariz), the first one with a baseball player hero, the first (and only) one to final in the Golden Heart (and win the FCRW Beacon).
Yet it’s the second book in my All Is Fair in Love & Baseball series. How’d that happen?
Not only was BEAUTY the second book I sold to Turquoise Morning Press, it fell second in my Arizona Condors timeline. Dave and Mel had already bumped into one another and reconciled by the time Matt meets Meg. In fact, Dave’s experience, which Matt went through alongside him, plays a role in Matt’s reasons for doing some of the things he does to piss Meg off. (DIVA IN THE DUGOUT came out of Matt’s explanation to Meg.)
You know the My Sexy Saturday drill by now, right?
Post 7 paragraphs or 7 sentences or 7 words ONLY. The choice is yours. It can be from a WIP or something you already have published. Your post should be live by 9 am US Pacific Time on Saturday. Put those lucky 7s to work for you!
This scene, from the early chapters, finds Matt kicked out of his hotel room while his brother, super-stylist Stan, cuts Meg’s hard-to-manage hair. Roping his brother into cutting her hair was Matt’s “in” to see her again. While he kills time in the lobby, one of his teammates tries to pick up the hotel restaurant’s hostess. The kid enlists Matt’s help, and Matt realizes she’s a baseball groupie just as Meg and his brother get to the lobby. But Meg doesn’t know he’s a ballplayer, and that’s the way he likes it … so he has to get her out the door before the hostess exposes his identity.
****
Matt pushed the door open and dragged her through it just as flashes started going off behind them.
Desperate that she not turn around to try to see what—or rather who—someone was attempting to photograph, he wrapped an arm around her waist and bent his head to kiss her.
Her lips were soft. Extremely soft. Beyond that, she tasted like something he couldn’t put his finger on. Slightly salty, but comforting.
As he maneuvered her away from the doors and into the darkness, he deepened the kiss. She responded in kind, and he forgot where he was. Forgot everything except kissing this woman who didn’t want him only for his talent.
Oh, she wanted him all right, but not because he could play baseball. That couldn’t be why; she had no clue.
Spurred by the thought, Matt pushed Meg against the wall. He was about to hike her leg up over his hip to draw her closer when his brother’s voice whispered in his ear.
“Matty, you don’t want people to see you out here like this, do you?”
Beauty and the Ballplayer, available now from Turquoise Morning Press and other e-tailers.
The wait is over: Get Beauty and the Ballplayer now
When BEAUTY AND THE BALLPLAYER finaled in the RWA® Golden Heart contest in 2011, I was floating way beyond Cloud Nine.
Now, my manuscript is a full-fledged book, released today by Turquoise Morning Press, and I find myself back on Cloud Nineteen … maybe even Cloud Twenty-Nine. Y’all already know numbers are not my strong suit. (That’s why I chose to work with words for a living instead of earning the big bucks as an engineer.)
The short blurb: After finding herself alone and pregnant at the advanced age of thirty-two, Meg Malone plans to avoid men — until Condors catcher Matt Thatcher throws her plan a curve.
You can find BEAUTY at the Turquoise Morning Press bookstore, as well as at Amazon, Smashwords and All Romance Ebooks.
If your favorite e-tailer isn’t on the list yet, check back. It should be available at IBooks, B&N, Kobo, Diesle, library and subscription channels within the next week or two.
Sliding into Home cover reveal
OK, OK. Technically, it’s not a reveal. You’ve probably already seen it on Facebook and/or Twitter, but now I’m plastering it here, on my blog: The cover for my April release from Turquoise Morning Press.
Gorgeous, isn’t it?
I love Jenn’s striking eyes. You can certainly see why her sister took Jade as a stage name.
SLIDING INTO HOME (until recently known as Untitled Book 3) comes out in mid-April. I can’t wait to share Greg and Jenn’s story.
Here’s a sneak peek:
More than anything, Arizona Condors first baseman Greg Bartlesby wants to make his own name in the big leagues. Too bad being the son of MLB legend Jake “Big Man” Bartlesby makes that impossible. Even worse? His attempts to differentiate himself from his old man more often land him in legal trouble. His latest brush with the law brings him in contact with an attorney he’s met before — as a dancer at the club where he was arrested … for protecting her.
Jenn Simpson isn’t a stripper—not that she can convince her bonehead client her twin is the one doing the dancing. When Greg offers her sister a job at his father’s Foundation, Jenn is the one who accepts, at her sister’s urging. She soon discovers she likes the work—and her new boss. As she and Greg forge a friendship and more, she knows it’s time to convince him she’s not who he thinks. But when his father’s hospitalization compels Greg to fast-track his leap to the majors by capitalizing on Big Jake’s fame, it might be too late for her to come clean.
A little Monday Motivation …
Writers, take note!
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Today must be the day for motivating thoughts, because this Ruby Slippered Sisterhood blog post also has me thinking: What I really want to say on Twitter by Liz Talley.
I’m pretty sure that’s what every author really wants to say on Twitter (and everywhere else), but can’t. “Look at me! Look at me!” gets really old, fast.
An endless stream of RT’s of fellow authors’ books, all at once — bang, bang, bang — also doesn’t cut it. That’s why I use Buffer to space out my tweets.
Liz also talks about planting butt in chair to write the next book, which is something I need to get back to doing. With releases coming from TMP in March and April, as well as plans to self-pub in June, I haven’t written any new words in too long. Been self-editing BLIND DATE BRIDE and prepping for the release of BEAUTY AND THE BALLPLAYER and SLIDING INTO HOME (formerly Untitled Book 3).
Speaking of SLIDING INTO HOME, I don’t think I’ve shared the cover on my blog yet. Look for it later this week.
At least Saturday’s plot group meeting got my creative juices going again. I now have some ideas for a fourth Love & Baseball story, thanks to some brainstorming with the NARWA crew. I’ll be back to banging out new words in no time.