So this morning I prepared myself for disappointment and thus my excitement is TEN-fold to announce that First, I Love You made it to the next round of Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Contest!!!!
Every year Amazon selects Indie novels from 20,000 entrants in the first round to potentially win a final prize of $50,000 AND a publishing contract with their imprint.
They have five genre categories and select 400 of these entrants in each category to advance to the second round:
This is SOOOOO exciting!!!
(Or is that just me?)
Hee.
“This was like discovering your vanilla cupcake had a chocolate fudge center.” — Tommy Gates (First, I Love You)
I’m writing… and editing… and writing… and starting all over… and writing… and so forth. In the mean time: You could read First, I Love You or talk about First, I Love You here, or if you’re ready for some tasty Tommy & Ginny you can start on Second of All. And good news NOOK fans! I’ve been told B&N is just backlogged right now and it should be up soonish. (I know, finally, right?)
Have a fabulous day!
Did you know? You can read some facts about the characters in the Downey-verse that may or may not be revealed in the books at the page to the right called:
More about The Downey Trilogy.
This week (knock wood) I hope to add a few more characters, including ones from the Bird Day Battalion who are tangentially related in that Kyle Anderson (Katelyn’s twin brother) was Tommy’s partner at the Omaha Police Department.
In addition, the wonderful ladies at the Five Star Series group at Goodreads made a whole thread about First, I Love You which is a really huge honor to me and I didn’t even ask them to do it! There (hopefully!!) you can talk about your favorite parts of the book to give their group members an idea of what it’s about. The more people that talk about the book the better. Heck, I’d even welcome complaints. Well… gentle complaints. LOL I just would love to not be talking to myself.
I’ve also requested reviews from some lovely ladies who run lovely fiction reviewing blogs so that means over the course of the next several months I can get some reviews for First, I love You from perfect strangers, which I hope in turn means readership and reviews for Second of All. Well… assuming they don’t just lobster hate it. But nobody has hated it yet. Even the ones not related to me. Har har.
Speaking of which, THANK YOU very, very, very much to those who have taken the time to rate or review any of my books! You are all made of awesomesauce.
I hope everyone is having a great weekend so far!
And as always,
‘I wish you enough’.
EDITED TO ADD:
Ok, so I wrote the above post and today I get a random one star (with no review attached) for First, I Love You at Apple. Absolutely no one has given it less than four stars so far, but there is a first time for everything and not everyone likes the same things. So I need to ammend the statement above to say apparently there is someone who lobster hates it. Ha! I’m cool with that.
It’s what you would see standing underneath the “Bean” at Chicago’s Millenium Park. I took this picture while on a trip with my dad and his friend “Uncle Jack”. I picked it because, of course, most of the book is set in Chicago and also I felt like it symbolized the theme of the book; that everyone could be looking at the same thing and see things from their own warped perspective. Six very different characters and points of view of the same story.
The second book, as you may have discovered, is less of a character sketch than the first, and more what happens when everyone’s lives get entangled and their points of view start shifting ever so slightly.
You know how there are songs that make you think of people? These are some of the songs that I loved listening to while writing for the couples in Second of All:
Some Nights by Fun
Kryptonite by Three Doors Down
Hey Girl by Damian Marley
Fever by Peggy Lee
They Can’t Take that Away From Me by Louis Armstrong &Ella Fitzgerald
Locked out of Heaven by Bruno Mars
What do you think? Do you have any songs that make you think of these characters?
The giveaway ends tonight. I will announce the winners in the morning. RIGHT NOW! (LOL) You may see the winners on the right or at this link:
http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/c9b9690/
The first ten winners will receive a digital copy of First, I Love You by email.
Terri F. and Nikki O. will receive signed copies of First, I Love You and Second of All. The draw back is they will have to wait until next week for me to mail them out. The brightside? TWO FREE BOOKS!
🙂
A HUGE thank you to everyone that has entered especially since I have done ZERO promoting for it. It’s been crazy with family stuff and getting Second of All ready for publishing.
January 1st!!!!!! I can’t wait for your reactions.
*smooches*
1. Thank you to all my super awesome friends who helped spread the word about the Amazon sale of First, I Love You.
2. Thank you to all the people who entered the Goodreads Giveaway for First, I Love You, I will get the books out soon. We had this little pesky blizzard that closed I-80 so that’s put me a bit behind.
3. There is still one more opportunity to get your hands on a free copy of First, I Love You and that is to enter the giveaway to the right. Please click on the Reading Romances widget and check out all the fabulous other giveaways going on Christmas week!
4. Only 12 days left until New Years Day and the release of Second of All! I sure hope you love it. Or at least passionately like it. LOL
Get it HERE:
Other than my middle son’s 7th birthday and the possible end of the world… naw I’m kidding.
Anyhoo,
1. Starting Tuesday, December 18th until Thursday, December 20th, the Kindle version of First, I Love You will be ON SALE for only $.99!!! I’ll be tweeting like a fiend on those days promoting it. Your help would be appreciated but most importantly I hope to have your patience as I slightly spam your Twitter and Facebook feeds. 😛
2. Also on Thursday, December 20th, the Goodreads Giveaway of First, I Love You ends and then I will send out two free signed copies.
3. Also, also, ALSO on December 20th, I will start participating in the Christmas Giveaway at Reading Romances. I plan to give away 10 digital copies of First, I Love You in whatever format the winner chooses (Kindle, iBooks, Nook), and 2 lucky winners will get a signed paperback copy of BOTH First, I Love You and Second of All (after the January 1st release of course). You can click on the little flying books icon on the right to enter between the dates of December 20th to 27th.
4. We are also only two weeks away from the launch of Second of All. SO, after I get the FILY books in the mail I will start a Giveaway for Second of All only with a LOT more copies so I could use some help getting the word out to make such a giveaway successful. I will also start a Q&A on the Downey Trilogy after the release. Such things only work if I’m not talking to myself. *hint hint* *wink wink*
And in conclusion, a shout out to my super fantastic husband who got me these super swell planners to keep track of all these different projects AND my writing. He’s so… just really… wonderful. It must get exhausting dealing with my cluttered mind, but I called him when he was on a trip and I babbled and babbled and babbled about “and I need this and I need that and I just don’t know how to do this and that” and whine, whine, whine… and somehow he was able to translate this into normal people language and bring me home the EXACT thing I needed when I was sure such a thing didn’t exist.
Ummm…
Keeper!
Hope you all have a fantastic week!
*smooches*
Genevieve Dewey 