Music Monday – Page 16

Music Monday: North and South – What About Now (Daughtry)

Welcome to August. 🙂 Today, I have a movie meets music selection with a rocky edge to it. I chose it for a few of the lyrics that seem to go with the story I just completed writing. Here are the lyrics, and below the video, you’ll find a few lines of the story which I hope will help you see how this song seems to fit the plight Charles Edwards finds himself in at the end of Charles: To Discover His Purpose.

…can we see beyond the scars
And make it to the dawn?

AND

What if you’re making me all that I was meant to be?

AND

This broken heart can still survive
With a touch of your grace

AND (finally)

For all my life, I am yours

Published to YouTube by Elva Dögg Guðmundsdóttir on September 21, 2008.

“You, Miss Barrett, are perhaps the most compassionate, yet uncompromising, lady I have ever met. You do not only do great things, but you demand them as well. You inspire me to be a better man. You,” his lips curled into a small smile, “with all your scolding and reprimanding, have caused me to find something at which I am good…”

AND

“I will not present any other offer to you from this day forward. I will simply leave you with the option of choosing me. If someday, I should be so fortunate as to earn your good opinion as well as your heart, you have only to tell me, and I will be yours for time and eternity. I will not charm anything from you, Evelyn. Never from you. I will only ever take what you wish to give me, even if at this moment it is anger and distrust.”

Charles’s story is with my first reader, and I expect to get her notes on it this week. It has finished posting at Patreon, and I am hoping to get the preorder set up by the end of this week so that it can go live next Tuesday.

Charles’s ebook cover is all ready to go, and a cover reveal to my mailing list and here on the blog are scheduled for next Monday.

I do, however, still need to write a blurb before I can set up that preorder. So, that will be on my to-do list this week.

Writing-wise, I took it a bit easy this week. I allowed myself a full week of non-writing days. During those days, I worked on other things, such as…

I was able to get more of the Dash of Darcy and Companions Collection re-covered. I still need to create a couple of print covers for ebooks which already have their new covers, and I have to create two Companions Duos. That’s all that is left on that project. I’ll be very glad when this updating project is complete. It was a big job.

I spent some time playing with graphics and working on a few items for my Society6 store, BonnyLassCreatives. I figured since it is now August and school will be starting soon, I would work on making some stickers, notebooks, and note cards for my shop. I added a few new designs but only a few. However, it was the creative break my brain needed to relax after the completion of one story and slowly come back to ready to write.

By Wednesday of this week, after seven non-writing days, I was itching to get back to some story. Mary Crawford will be the focus of my next Other Pens book, and my mind has started to work on figuring out her whys. So, I have not written anything for her yet. I did work on Delighting Mrs. Bennet on Thursday and Friday, and I think that story is nearly complete. I will focus on it this week because I think it really only requires a few thousand more words.

Since I do not yet have a story from which I can pull an excerpt, there isn’t one for today and won’t be one again next week. So, instead, I will leave you with a couple of pictures of my stickers, note cards, and notebooks as well as this question:

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I’m currently working on figuring out Mary Crawford’s “need” and her motivation. They are usually intricately woven together. I have some ideas about her, but I would be fascinated to hear what you think about — How did Mary Crawford become who she is? Drop your thoughts in the comments.

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KOBO AMAZON NOOK IBOOKS MAILING LIST PATREON SOCIETY6

Music Monday: Winter, Blackmore’s Night

Can you tell by the title of this instrumental selection which book might be today’s giveaway book? Below the video is the list of remaining book choices.

Published on YouTube, October 30, 2010, by kirelafonos.

A Very Mary Christmas

One Winter’s Eve

Two Days Before Christmas

You can find out if you have the right book by scrolling down to just before the story excerpt, but please come back and read my news and the excerpt after you take your chances at getting a copy of today’s Christmas in July giveaway book.

BOOK NEWS:

Delighting Mrs. Bennet has reached an interesting (and slightly dangerous) place in its plot. I think I can see the end coming soon, but I’m not exactly certain how long it will take to get to that ending I can see. There are still a few things to take care of. (Not the least of which is making sure that all the characters are safe. 😉 ) I will have all of October filled with scheduled Thursday posts before the week is out!

Charles: To Discover His Purpose is progressing well. I have passed the 20,000 word mark, and I have posted through chapter 7 on Patreon and should have chapter 8 posted there later today before I edit chapter 9 and then start on chapter 10. 🙂 I’m really enjoying writing this story. Charles is proving to be an interesting fellow to understand and help find his best self.

The Dash of Darcy and Companion Stories are getting a bit of a reorganization. Instead of being two separate collections, I am combining them into one and numbering them. This should make them easier for readers to find on Amazon. So, if you are looking at them over this month, you will likely see some have the new combined collection listed as the series and then a book number. These are being numbered mostly in the order they were published. The only exception to that is I am putting bundles in the line after the books which they contain rather than farther following their publication dates. All of the titles except perhaps the two Dash of Darcy Duos will be getting new covers and all of the older titles will be getting backmatter updates. The stories will stay the same. I am not redoing the books in order, so things will look odd for a while as I am working on completing this large project. I hope to be done by the end of July, but I am not certain that is a realistic goal. It might be early August before it is finished.

CHRISTMAS IN JULY GIVEAWAY:

Did you guess the right book? 😀

CLICK HERE TO CLAIM ONE OF THE 5 COPIES OF One Winter’s Eve.

The copies are available on a first come, first serve basis until all five have been claimed or the link expires on Friday, July 20, 2018.

[update: All five copies of this book have found homes. 🙂 ]

I was able to work with a couple of young boys, who helped me reveal some things about our hero in this…

EXCERPT FROM Charles: To Discover His Purpose: Continue reading Music Monday: Winter, Blackmore’s Night

Music Monday: Falling Slowly (Period Dramas)

“Why just last year, three young ladies made very eligible matches after I had shown them particular attention. I tell you, I am a good luck charm for the matrimonially-minded miss.” {Charles Edwards in Henry: To Prove Himself Worthy]

Those are just a few of the lines from Chapter 1 of Henry: To Prove Himself Worthy where we are introduced to Henry Crawford’s friend, Charles Edwards.

Posted on YouTube by FANNYJKL, May 18, 2018.

Why am I sharing a quote from that book when I have another book coming out this week?

Because Charles happens to be the next character who will be subjected to my particular sort of reformation and improvement. At present, he is a rake — a bad boy through and through. But, we all know that that will change. 🙂

The above video is one that I have pinned to my Pinterest board for Charles’s story — but I’ll get to more information about that in a moment.

For now, I want to remind you that the story for another gentleman, William Collins, who underwent a transformation releases this Thursday, June 28, 2018! That’s only three more sleeps until Master of Longbourn goes LIVE. It is currently on pre-order and can be found at your favourite retailer by following this link.

There are a few advance reader reviews that you can read on Bookbub here. Thank you to those who read and reviewed early copies. 🙂

Ok, now back to Charles. 🙂

This week, I was able to get just under 5,000 words written on this new work in progress. Here’s what I can tell you about the story at the moment:

The title is Charles: To Discover His Purpose

The Hero and Heroine are Charles Edwards and Evelyn Barrett. As I said before, Charles is Henry’s friend (and also Trefor Linton’s friend). Evelyn is Constance Linton’s friend.

Charles is rakish. He’s drifting along through life having a great time.

Evelyn is a proper young lady — well, mostly — she does have a mischievous streak, and she can be direct in her words. She also has a carrying heart which sees her doing all manner of charity work.

As you can probably guess from that information, Charles is going to hit a rough patch in his easy, take-what-you-can-get life, and that rough patch’s name is Evelyn. For him, it might start as a bit of a game to see if he can break the proper Evelyn and steal a kiss or two or more. But as Henry Crawford discovered in Mansfield Park, games such as this can be dangerous as they may end up breaking the player’s heart. (And yes, there is at least that one deliberate nod to Mansfield Park in this story. There may be more. Time will tell.)

Can you see how the song I shared today seems to fit with this story? Charles and Evelyn will be slowing falling for each other and there will be some games played and there will some struggle and there is a need for being pointed “home,” etc. That is why I chose this song to share as it’s theme feels like it fits well with Charles’s story.

Would you like to read a short excerpt from what I have written so far? If so, keep reading 🙂 This is a portion of what I wrote on Friday of last week. It’s part of chapter 2 and will be posted soon on Patreon. (Probably tomorrow)

This portion focuses on Evelyn and her not well-pleased mother.

AN EXCERPT FROM Charles: To Discover his Purpose: Continue reading Music Monday: Falling Slowly (Period Dramas)

Music Monday: The Young Victoria

Happy Victoria Day! In honour of the day, I have found a music video with some scenes from one of my favourite movies — The Young Victoria.

I’m sure the Pride and Prejudice fans among us will recognize the actor who plays Prince Albert. 🙂 Who knew Wickham would rise so far! LOL 😉

I do not have a writing excerpt for you today, but I do have some writing news:

Here in Canada, the Victoria Day long weekend is the unofficial start to summer and the cottage season, and I know that Memorial Day is similar for those in the US. Spanning the time from Victoria Day to Memorial Day, Kobo is running a 40% off selected boxsets promotion, and one of my books is part of the “selected boxsets.” Just use the promo code 40MAY when purchasing A Dash of Darcy and Companions Cottage Collection 1 between now and May 28, 2018, to save 40% off the purchase price. The offer is good worldwide.

This collection includes: Finally Mrs. Darcy, Waking to Mr. Darcy, A Very Mary Christmas, Discovering Mr. Darcy, and Not an Heiress.

On Thursday of this week…

Click image to find this book at your favourite store.

Confounding Caroline will be released. Those who have preordered will have the book delivered to them, and those who like to purchase after the release day can do just that.

Which brings me to the reason why there is no writing excerpt this week. Master of Longbourn has gone to my first editor, and hopefully by the end of the week will be with my second editor. I haven’t selected a definite release date yet, but I expect it will be about one month from today or just a few days after that. Therefore, since it is in editing, I do not have anything to share from it, and…

Delighting Mrs. Bennet, which I was working on last week and am continuing to work on this week, is our current Thursday story, and I don’t want to give anything away, so I do not have anything to share from it either.

I must say, I did not get a great deal of writing done on that story this week, but I did do some brainstorming about the plot and how things might play out for a couple of characters. You (and I) will have to wait to see what happens, but there is at least one interesting little idea that popped up while I was writing on Friday. It’s one of those “Oh! This could be fun!” ideas that is accompanied by a “I wonder how many readers will find it as fun as I do?” worry. I can’t say more than that right now, other than it is an unusual pairing idea that may or may not work as I am currently thinking. These characters do tend to change things as I settle into understanding them and figure out what they will and won’t do.

I hope you have a good week! I’m hoping that since I spent that time on doing some brainstorming this past week, this week will be a better word count week despite the few last things I need to get done before Confounding Caroline’s release day.

Until next time…

Happy Reading!

Leenie

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Music Monday: Period Dramas – At the Beginning

Welcome to the beginning of a new week full of possibilities. As I look forward to the week ahead, I like to start by taking inventory of where I am by looking back at what I accomplished last week. It’s a lot easier to know where you are going if you know where you are starting. 🙂

But first…

Some musical inspiration…

videosbyloo. “Period Dramas – At the Beginning (PDC).” YouTube, YouTube, 17 June 2011, youtu.be/jMLlkAMLV-Q.

And then…

Writing News:

Mr. Darcy’s Comfort released, successfully, last week on Thursday. 🙂 You can find out more about the book as well as a link that will provide all my vendor options at this link:

https://books2read.com/b/3GYBBr

My writing time focused only on Master of Longbourn this week because I actually took two nights off from writing. I did not take them off completely. I still did some other book business work, but no story was written. Launching a book can be draining (so much excitement is tiring 🙂 ) and when I combined that with a lack of sleep (because my body does that sometimes), I ended up with a mushy, not terribly creative brain. And that is not good for writing. 🙂 So, after fighting the idea for a while (I’m no quitter, you see :D) I gave in and allowed the brain to do things other than create imaginary worlds. Hopefully, this week, I will get in all five writing sessions.

Because of the book release, I did not do my regular editing time. I gave that time to book release sorts of things such as creating a graphic, posting an excerpt (which I am using for marketing purposes), sending out an email to my mailing list, making sure I had the book added to my book page and a few other things like that. (I have a list. It’s rather long.)

But that was last week, and though I will need to keep doing some marketing work for the new book, this week during editing period, I plan to begin final edits on Confounding Caroline since I have them back from my editor. I should have a publication date firmed up by next Monday!

I have also begun a project of updating book covers and reorganizing some things. This project will not be completed any time soon, but it has begun. I started by updating the cover for Listen to Your Heart. The story inside has not changed, although I did update the book list in the backmatter and added an excerpt from And Then Love.

And lastly, I created a bundle of stories — a box set of Dash of Darcy and Companion Stories. This bundle contains Finally Mrs. Darcy, Waking to Mr. Darcy, A Very Mary Christmas, Discovering Mr. Darcy, and Not an Heiress.

I have only uploaded this bundle to Kobo so far since I wish to apply to have it included in a promotion in May, but this week, I will be attempting to add it to other vendors. In fact, between when I am writing this Saturday night and Monday when you are reading this, I might have gotten part of that done. There will be a print version eventually.

Phew! You know, now that I have listed all that out I can understand better why I was so tired by the end of the day on Thursday. When I’m just working on this and that steadily through a week, I don’t see how much I am actually doing. Little by little, consistent, steady effort adds up!

Now, for…

AN EXCERPT FROM Master of Longbourn: Continue reading Music Monday: Period Dramas – At the Beginning