Friday Fun Facts: I'm a USA Today Best-Selling Author!

Happy Friday, everyone! 

In case you didn't see my crazy posts on Facebook or Twitter over the last 36 hours, I'm thrilled to say that I am officially a USA Today Best-Selling author! That's right: Passionate Kisses 2: Love in Bloom hit the list after its release week (if anyone's interested, we sold just around 7,000 US copies in that week). What do I love even more? My novella Setting Sail is featured in two of the reviews on the USA list page. Check it out!

Writers' Wednesday: A Review of Eleanor & Park

Hello readers! Today I'm gushing about one of my new favorite books & authors: Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell.

This is a YA novel, and it's about as beautifully written as they come. Eleanor has bright red hair, some extra weight, above-average intelligence, and a home life made up of a beautiful but spineless mother, 4 younger siblings, and an abusive stepfather. Park is part-Korean, loves comics and music, and thinks Eleanor is the biggest misfit he's ever met...until they sit next to each other on the bus and become friends. The book unfolds over the course of a year as 16-year old Eleanor and Park slowly fall in mad, all-consuming first love with each other, amid bullies and parental crises. It's heartbreaking at times, uplifting at others, and has a *perfect ending*. It took me 2 days to read, and only because I put it down a few times because I didn't want to get to the end. This is a must-read for everyone! I'll leave you with some of my favorite lines (there are so many; these are only a few):

"Holding Eleanor's hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive."

"When Eleanor smiled at him, something broke inside him. Something always did."

"There's only one of him, she thought, and he's right here, He knows I'll like a song before I've heard it. He laughs before I even get to the punchline. There's a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes me want to let him open doors for me."

Monday Mentionables: The Power of the Boxed Set on Sales

Well hello there! Happy Monday. Today a very quick talk for writers about how participating in a boxed set can drive your other sales. Most of you know I've been involved in two boxed sets, Passionate Kisses and Passionate Kisses 2, and among the many benefits is the way your book in a set can drive sales of your other titles.

I saw this incrementally with the first set. My story in Passionate Kisses was Beacon of Love. It was ninth of ten books in the set, and sales of Inferno of Love, the book that follows it in the Hometown Heroes series, picked up around 1-2 months after the set released. Inferno continues to sell moderately well, and I attribute that to new readers picking up the set and finding a new story/series to buy.

This time around, the effect has been much faster and more dramatic. My book in Passionate Kisses 2 is Setting Sail, the prequel to my Cocktail Cruise series. It's also fourth of the ten titles in the set. Since last Tuesday, release day, my sales for the full series, the first title in the series, and (interestingly enough) my one free title, have all picked up. What makes me even happier is that the Cocktail Cruise series is $7.99 - not a cheapie purchase by any means, but people are still buying it.

This is why I highly recommend anyone participating in a boxed set to use that set to springboard your own sales. An author friend of mine said it very eloquently on a Facebook group I belong to, so I'll leave you with this thought. Happy writing!

"Since we are essentially "giving away" our books in the boxed set, the big payoff comes when new-to-you readers buy your next book. It's really important to have your next book available at the time of our boxed set release, so that when they finish your story - and loved it - and want more - there is more for them to buy. That's how you make your money. That's how you build your readership.That's how you harness the power of a series."