A Week of Firsts
It was so exciting to launch Pledged to the Highborn Warrior a week ago! My first ever indie book. My first ever sci-fi romance!
It’s so strange too as I’m used to having all the ‘little things’ like ads, promotions and more done for me by my publishers. I also know with SFR books, readers love series so until I get more books out, my focus is less on publicizing this first book and more on getting the third book written (I’ve already written the second which is with my editor right now!).
But even with this ‘soft launch’ approach, I’ve been delighted with the response. The reviews come in every day, and mainly they’re four and five stars and so enthusiastically and brilliantly written. The SFR reading community is truly passionate about this genre and you can sense it in the way they write about Pledged. As I write this, Pledged has a 4.3 out of 5 rating on Amazon.com, 4.4 on Amazon.co.uk and, crazily enough, a 4.00 on GoodReads (GR is notoriously tough).
Below are some of my fave quotes from these reviews which focus on the characters… because ultimately, it’s the characters that are so important in stories, right?
I also love how reviewers are saying the story is so unique. That means a lot.
What I also love is that nearly 18k pages have been read in just a week! And that number is just going up and up each day. This is with minimal marketing.
I think a lot of this is down to the amazing support I’ve received from my fellow SFR authors. I’ve always known how strong the author community is and this genre’s community is no different. In fact, they are SUPEER enthusiastic and supportive and I think it’s because alien romance is such a niche. So many amazing authors have shared news of Pledged top the Highborn Warrior’s launch the past few days on social media. Particular shout outs to Ursa Dax who featured Pledged in her newsletter along with a VERY steamy illustration from her amazing Fated Mates of the Sea Sand Warlords series. And I saw yesterday that the awesome Veronica Scott who featured my cover as part of her popular weekly roundup of SFR releases.
So what next? Well, as I mentioned, Seized by the Rebel Barbarian is with my editor. At the moment, it’s marked for publication on 26th May but honestly, I think I’ll publish it a month early than that! I mean, why not if it’s ready in time? I’m also writing book 3, Stolen by the Warlord Prince and while I have the publication date set for end of June, again, I think that’ll more likely be end of May to mid June. But let’s see how that goes.
The fact is though, I am loving this series so much, I can’t stop writing it. In fact, I even wrote a novella spin-off in a matter of days. It’s called Rescued by the Alien Defender and shows the beginnings of the romance between strong, silent aliens Adin and vivacious human, Anaya. You can download it by clicking cover below (I’m waiting a professional cover which will come through in the coming days!).
I have learnt so much the past few months and even more so the past few weeks as I approached publication. There’s definitely a whole other blog post for that one so I’ll post that next, I think.
Until then, thank you to my amazing readers and author friends. X