Free Audiobooks!

Popping in briefly from my blurred state to give you a reminder about that audiobook giveaway I mentioned a while back. 

I still have a handful of free codes to distribute - 25 for Songbird and 25 for A Wider World. 

PLEASE let me know if you want one or both. (The only thing I ask in return is that if you enjoy listening to the book, to please leave a review on Spotify. It's a new platform, it's audience-building all over again).

You can leave a comment here or email me at karen @ karenheenan . com

I've got mail!

 

There's something special about book mail. Any book mail.

When it's your own book mail, it's even more special. 

Yesterday I received my author copies of Lady, in Waiting, in addition to a box of Songbird - only had one copy left, and I'd like to be prepared for people who want to purchase the entire set.

I just love seeing all the covers together! The font (which is called Gondola, by the way) is as much a part of them as the actual ceiling art.

Signed copies of any of my books are available for $15 each, including shipping (same as Amazon, but with a signature and a bookmark!)

What a long, strange trip it's been

 

This thought occurs with increasing frequency. I just passed the third anniversary - December 6 - of pitching the manuscript for Songbird for the first time on Twitter. It was a pitch event called PitMad, where you tweet a pitch to your book, and the only people who are supposed to like it are agents and publishers. 

I got three likes on Songbird's pitch. Two were agents, one of whom hasn't gotten back to me yet, so I assume she changed her mind. The second agent wanted the book drastically rewritten in a very different voice and I turned her down. The third like was from my former publisher, and if you've been following along for some time now, you know that went pretty well.

But now I'm on my own, and looking back at these three years, I see how much I've accomplished. Not discounting the help of the publisher, I still produced Songbird and A Wider World, both the writing and the editing, and participated in the process of publishing. Not liking Songbird's first cover, I commissioned and paid for the new cover (and then the cover for A Wider World), because I felt they suited the books better. This was good, because when I left my publisher, I owned the rights to my covers and only had to have their logo removed. 

I wrote, and edited, and prepared Lady, in Waiting (book 3) for publication, which, now that I'm independent, will be coming out in February, rather than April, 2022. I've also completed a very workable draft of my 1930s novel, My Sister's Child. This will be completed and ready to release in October, 2022. 

It really boggles my mind that I worked on Songbird for such a long time (it existed pre-internet) and yet once I started showing my work to the wider world - no surprise where that title came from! - it turns out I can produce much faster in a way that does not, at least in my view, take away from the quality of the work. One of the first things I posted on this blog when I began to talk about publishing was the statement "get out of your own way." 

I keep learning, over and over again, just how much I was in my way, and how even now, there are still ways for me to step aside and let me get more done.

My second act

So I signed a contract the other day - a contract to terminate a contract.

As of October 28, 2021, the rights to Songbird and A Wider World belong to me.

Three years ago, when I signed with my small publisher, I was a different writer. I wasn't fully educated in the ways of self-publishing, and while I didn't want to go the traditional route of agent/publisher, I did have a need for outside validation. I guess it came from writing only for myself for so long - I needed someone to tell me it was good, and worth releasing into the world.

That has changed. My validation these days comes from within, and from the readers I am lucky to have found. What else has changed is my willingness to do all the work to publish my books myself, and control the way they are published, distributed, and marketed. It came on gradually - first, when I suggested changing the cover for Songbird (because most people saw it and thought 'historical romance,' when I think of it as ' historical with some romance,' the way most lives have some romance). I found a new cover designer, and commissioned the new cover. I also found the voice artist for the audiobook.

When it came time for A Wider World, I already knew where I would be interfering - cover and audio again, and this time I wrote my own book blurb (the description on the back or in the Amazon listing). 

I submitted Lady, in Waiting, the third book in my Tudor Court series, and it was through the editing process in August, 2021, but wouldn't be published until April, 2022, because that's just how publishing works. There are other authors; there are scheduling concerns outside my control; there's a pandemic, which could throw that existing schedule off course at any time.

After much thought, I reached out to the publishers and asked if they would consider rights reversion. I have nothing against my publisher - they were very collaborative and overall it's been a very good experience - but my personality is much more inclined to be a one-woman band. 

My chief reason, as I explained it to them, is that I'm 57. I got a late start as an author, and if I want to make any kind of second act career out of writing, I need to be able to do it on my own schedule, and not hold a book for 8 months because that's when it fits on someone else's schedule. 

They agreed, and within a week everything was signed and my books are slowly being taken down from all the various platforms. Ebooks came down first, which means that's where I'll start in the self-publishing process. My goal is to have them re-published by December 1, so as to catch a few holiday buyers, and to release my new book in February. It's a book about marriage - how could I not schedule it to appear near Valentine's Day?

For those who are interested in the process of self-publishing, and how I'm going about it, I'll post the various steps as I go. If you're not interested in that, I'll still be talking about sewing and craft shows and writing generally, in between.

 

Songbird Book Trailer

My publisher put together a quick trailer for Songbird using some of my reference photos, with Bess's signature song, The Cuckoo, performed by Elizabeth Larsen. If anyone has seen my Facebook live reading at Songbird's launch, I paused the reading to have a small breakdown play this at the appropriate point in the story.

This was a pleasant surprise for me, and I hope you enjoy another look into Bess's life.

Blowing my own horn

 

So, this happened.

I'm still a bit over the moon at Songbird being declared anyone's Book of the Year, but The Coffee Pot Book Club is a seriously good book review blog, and an award from them carries weight in the author and reader community.

It also carries some weight in helping to promote A Wider World when the time comes, because one of the prizes is a blog tour, which can be scheduled for early spring, just before the new book comes out. It will coincide with my publisher dropping the price on Songbird to celebrate the pre-order status of the second book.

2020 is still a year I'd rather not repeat, but this makes a lot of it better.

Exhale

I don't know about you, but the first ten days of November have been a long year. And let's not talk about how long the year has actually been; I feel myself aging as I type.

Things have been moving along. Despite - or maybe because of - the oddness of the year, I've almost completed the first draft of my third book. This is good, because I've promised the publisher a readable draft by the end of the year (which would be 11:59 p.m. on December 31, and not a minute sooner), and while it's readable by me right now, I'm not so sure anyone else could make heads or tails of it.

My cover designer has just completed a stunning cover for A Wider World - as beautiful in its own way as the new cover for Songbird. I can't show it off yet, but I'd like to. It's another period-appropriate ceiling, and it's gorgeous.

Despite the fact that it's November and the leaves have turned and mostly fallen, it's been in the 70s here, so it's hard to feel convinced of that. I just finally tore out the last of the pepper plants from the back yard and got the beds ready for winter. My next-door-neighbor gave me a few cinderblocks and an old recycle tub, so I've also set up a new composting system by the back fence, because my dinky little tumbling composter can't keep up. A few of my neighbors who don't compost deliver their food scraps to me, and a chicken-owning neighbor gives me the mucky straw from her coop. (Manure and fresh eggs are what I miss most about having chickens. The chickens...not so much).

Thanksgiving is coming. It's going to be strange this year, because of Covid. We've had Thanksgiving dinner in NJ with Mario's family every year since 2005, but his mom's in a nursing home now, mostly on lockdown (we visit at her window like she's a puppy in a pet store) and his sister works in a hospital, so her hours are inconsistent, and we couldn't sit down together indoors, anyway. Having his mom isolated is difficult, but even Mario is glad we got her placed in February, before all this happened - since she's got severe memory issues, it would have been really hard to feel that she was safe living on her own during quarantine and beyond.

It will get better, eventually. It has to, right? The news of a potential vaccine this week was cheering, as was the end of all the election ads, if not - completely - the election itself.

I just keep thinking, "It's history. I'm living through history." And it's not always fun.

Author copies

There are better feelings than seeing your name on a book cover, but honestly, there aren't many.

Especially a new book cover, which feels much more like what I'd envisioned from the beginning, and is totally my idea combined with my cover designer's skill and amazing font choice.

I got a box of author copies for an upcoming craft show on Thanksgiving weekend - my town is doing their annual show, with half the vendors so we can be properly spaced, mandatory masking-and-sanitizer, doors open for extra ventilation, and I'm going to take a few copies along in case anyone is interested.

If you don't have your copy yet, and would like this snazzy new design, drop me an email or leave a comment here with your email address. I can even provide gift wrap for the holidays, if you're feeling giftish. 

 

How it started; how it's going

 

There's a thing going around on Twitter among the writing community - "how it started, how it's going." Some responses are as minimal as a blank page and a page with "Chapter 1" written on it; others are a notebook, and a stack of published books.

Being somewhere in the middle, I thought I'd show mine. This is the very beginning of Songbird, which you can see on the cover says "Henry book," then "King's Creatures" and "King's Music," two of its early titles.

Songbird was started before I had a computer at home. I'm not sure if I even reliably had one at work, just things with some memory that I couldn't save personal stuff onto, which explains the second photo - a later portion of the book with handwritten, literal cut-and-tape inserts and lots of edits which wrap around the sides.

I thought my handwriting was bad then. There's no way I could draft a book by hand now, I'd never be able to read it.

Surprisingly, the section of the book contained on this page made it into the final version relatively intact. I recognize some of the dialogue and know that it's still there. Which is shocking, because I feel like I wrote and rewrote and edited and tinkered and tweaked the book at least 142 times.

And counting.

The final picture is where it's at. 

Where it's going is book 2 (no cover yet) and book 3 (not completely drafted yet). But I'll get there, and I hope you'll be with me when I do.

A Wider World Teaser

I'm currently working on my third book, but book 2 is bubbling away in the background, working its way toward publication.

There's no cover image yet, but one of my ways of brainstorming while writing (but not actually writing) is to make collages of the research images I've found. This is what I put together for the second book.

Robin Lewis was a character from Songbird, who we first see as an obnoxious 12-year-old chorister who clashes with Bess, the main character. Their lives touch at several points, and Robin never quite explains his actions. 

(Hint: he does, in A Wider World). This is the blurb - the back cover / Amazon copy - at least so far. Everything gets tweaked, multiple times, but I'm happy with it at the moment.

Can memories save a life? 

After five years of exile, Robin Lewis stands accused of heresy by the dying Queen Mary. When an escort arrives to bring him to the Tower of London, Robin spins a tale for his captor, hoping it will last long enough for him to be saved by the accession of Mary's heir, the young Queen Elizabeth.

As he revisits his life under three Tudor monarchs, Robin wonders how he will be judged, not just by the queen, but by the God he stopped serving long ago.

Audio Arrival!

So the audiobook for Songbird is finally up everywhere! It actually arrived on Audible sooner than expected. ACX, the technical name for Audible, has really high production standards and will bounce books that are accepted everywhere else. I was a little nervous, until it appeared.

Then, because things never run completely smooth, it ended up somehow categorized under literature, fiction, and erotica. While there are a few... Interesting scenes in the book, anybody who purchased it looking for erotica would be sorely disappointed, and readers not looking for that would avoid the book, so I waited to really promote the Audible listing until my publisher reached out and had Amazon correct it. We're still not sure how it happened, because I know the categories that the book is in, and since it's a book already on Amazon, the categories should have simply carried over.

Who knows? Technical glitches happen, and this one is sorted now.

All this is to say that I have free codes for the audiobook, and all you have to do - you knew there'd be a catch, right? - is to sign up for my newsletter (which is on the sidebar) and respond to the newsletter email, saying you're interested in being entered to win a copy of the audio.

If you're on Facebook, you could also like and share my author page. I didn't make that mandatory, because I know a lot of people aren't fans of Facebook these days. Truth to tell, I'm not always either, but I have to reach readers where I can find them.

The Audiobook is (almost) everywhere!

And by that, I mean it's everywhere but Audible. Because...Amazon. It takes its time. Like the Grinch's small heart, no one quite knows the reason.

Although - of course - Audible is the chief method of audiobook listening out there, can I make a few recommendations? Chirp is a relatively new audio provider. There's no fee to join, and by becoming a member, you get discounted audiobooks.

Discounts are good.

Also, Scribd is a program very much like Kindle Unlimited, except that you can also get audiobooks through them.

Either way, if you're interested in giving Songbird a listen, there's a free audio sample on any provider's website. If you give a listen - much less buy - I'd love to hear what you think!

COMING VERY SOON

So this is exciting.

I've been working for the past few months with my friend, Jennifer Summerfield, to record the audiobook for Songbird, and a few days ago, I uploaded the last chapters to the publisher's shared drive for final mastering. I heard from them yesterday that there's a very good chance that the audiobook will be available across most platforms by this weekend!

This weekend! Eep!

It may take a little bit longer to arrive on Audible, or it may not. They've been a bit slower lately on uploading independent and small press audiobooks, but let's keep a good thought, shall we?

I'll be able to post a sample from the audio soon so you can check out how Jen brought my imaginary friends to life.

Publishing News!

Readers of Songbird, rejoice, for there will - officially - be another book.

I recently signed a new contract with my publisher for my second Tudor novel, which will follow the side character of Robin Lewis through his eventful life through the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary I.

The book has already been submitted and first round edits complete. This is a big deal, because even though I tend to submit a very clean manuscript (possibly because it's been gone over 842 times), it doesn't stop me from thinking, "What if they hate it? What if they want me to change everything?" (Side note: I wouldn't. There are changes, and then there are changes. Most of what was requested in edits was a cleanup of my excessive love of commas -- yet not my even more excessive love of em-dashes. Go figure).

A Wider World won't be out until April, 2021, but I've started working on a third book, featuring a character who appears at the end of the second book, and I'm working on a novella that will be a freebie for members of my readers club. Not a member? Join here.

Books for sale

Since Covid-19 has canceled all live events for the foreseeable future, I have a few paperback copies of Songbird left on my shelf, reminding me of that fact.

If you don't yet have a copy, and would like to give it a try or maybe buy one as a gift, I'm offering them at $13.99 (below Amazon price), which includes a handwritten dedication, a cool Henry VIII bookmark, and US shipping.

Leave a comment here, or email me at karen @ karenheenan . com, and I'll send a PayPal or Venmo invoice.

A Wider World - Snippet

Kings Henry and Francis "wrestling"

Five hundred years ago this week, Henry VIII (and his court) journeyed to France to meet the French king (and his court).

I wrote about the Field of Cloth of Gold, as it came to be known, in Songbird, but it crops up again in A Wider World, because the (different) main character experiences some of the same events.

Henry's flagship, the Henry Grace-a-Dieu

Below is an excerpt from my next book, A Wider World:

***

As the king aged, so the court grew in importance. Looking back, we were a backwater country compared to the rest of Europe, but we knew it not—and if anyone did, they wisely did not speak of it.

In 1520, the cardinal arranged for a meeting to take place between King Henry and the French king. It was as much spectacle as summit, and certainly every noble with a guinea in his pocket to outfit his household was there, along with all the royal musicians and choristers, and enough servants to keep the whole production running smoothly.

It was my first time aboard ship, and while the majority of the choristers hung over the rail or confined themselves below, I stealthily climbed to the crow’s nest to catch my first glimpse of France as we crossed the narrow sea.

Calais looked no different than England, but it was. It was France. Another country. Where other languages were spoken and unfamiliar customs were the norm. It was like being handed an enormous, breathing book, and told I had just over two weeks to learn it all. I determined to try.

Add caption

***

Robin is young, but ambitious, and knows that his life will not always be that of a king's chorister - and it is not. Soon he grows up, attends Oxford, and crosses the narrow sea (the English Channel) again, on business not having to do with the King of England.

Stay tuned....

Listening to myself

I'm working away on on my next novel, but there are still things to do with Songbird. One of them is the audiobook.

My publisher could have arranged to have it recorded, but I wanted to take a stab at it myself. I took a stab. I took several stabs. I never got beyond chapter 3. For some reason, hearing my own words in my own voice made me want to do nothing more than rewrite the whole book. It's a little late for that.

When I first announced my brilliant idea of self recording, an actress friend volunteered to read if I decided I didn't want to do it. I finally decided - intelligently - to take her up on her offer.

Because she's an actress, and because I sew, this is going to be a convoluted barter job. Somewhere down the line, she'll get a Shakespeare level costume out of this. In the meantime, she's recorded 12 chapters out of 24, and while it's still difficult to listen to my words read out, it's much easier when I'm not doing the reading.

Sometimes we're just too close to our own work.

Once the audiobook is done, given a final polishing by my publisher, and uploaded to Amazon and all the other usual venues, I'll have one or two copies to give away. Keep an eye out for that, sometime in the not too distant future.

How I write a book

I thought I'd give an overview of how I write a book. Like any creative pursuit, there's no right way or wrong way. There's the way that works for you. Or me.

This is mine.

How it starts

I get an idea. It could be completely random, or inspired by something I've read. With Songbird, I read in a bio of Henry VIII that he once bought a child for the royal choir, and off I went. With my current project, A Wider World, it features a secondary character from Songbird, who, after that book was submitted to the publisher, decided to speak up and say he hadn't gotten a fair shake, and he wanted to explain himself. I listened.

Below is how I went about writing A Wider World. The numbers in parentheses are the word count when the draft was completed.

First Draft (134,000 words)

Some writers can write and edit at the same time, or write something, come back the next day to edit, and then keep on. My problem is that I enjoy the editing process, so I get lost if I do this. My first drafts, while not garbage, are pretty rough. For the most part, I don't write in linear fashion. I try to write the beginning, at least the first few chapters, to establish my characters and what's happening. (The events may change later, but I need to get them down).

From there, I try to write in order, but if I'm stuck and can see another scene clearly, I'll write that and then try to link the scenes together later. By the time I've written the first third of the book, I know the ending. If I'm feeling really clear, I'll write the ending, and give myself something to work toward.

The first draft of A Wider World took me about 8 months, and part of the reason it went that quickly is I was working with a world already developed in the first book. I needed to research specific things, but I don't always research as I write. There'll be a sentence like "Hawkins and I sat down to a meal of [whatever people of that level of society would serve unexpected guests]" and I'll keep going.

Second Draft (128,000 words)

This is the fun part, where I fix the structure of the book - plot, chronology, cross-checking history, fleshing out characters who are a bit transparent, doing research to fill the holes I've left. Second draft is heavy lifting and rearranging, but by the end, it gives me something that has the shape of the idea I had when I started out. This draft took me about 1.5 months.

Third Draft (120,000 words)

Cutting, shaping, and molding. This is the round where the book loses some serious weight, where I read it to see how many times I've mentioned the same thing (the problem with writing out of order is including necessary information whenever it seems necessary - but it's not necessary every time. I just won't know that until later). I also remove excess dialog tags, filter words (knew, realized, felt, etc.) and other bits that, while clever, only make me happy and do nothing to advance the story.

Another thing I've noticed with early drafts is that I hit the end of a scene or a chapter, and then I tend to dribble on for another paragraph or two, summing up. Those paragraphs are never necessary, and I can remove a lot of excess just looking for those. This draft took about another month.

Fourth Draft (hoping for 118,000 words)

This is where I am now, and this is where I read the book aloud, to see how it flows, to listen for repetitive words or words that need to be swapped for ones that sound better. This is a faster round than any of the others, because it's really just the final polishing before it gets submitted to my publisher for their editors to give it a once-over. I'm hoping to have this finished by early June, but my reading aloud may be slowed by the fact that lawn care on my block seems to be near-constant and I can't always hear myself think, much less read.

With Songbird, the publisher's suggestions were mostly about removing Britishisms and comments on my abiding love for the em-dash, but we'll see this time, because Songbird had been worked on for so long that if it was my child, it would be accruing student debt. A Wider World has been a much faster process, because I've learned that I can do it.

So that's it. That's how I write a book. At least until next time, when I'll probably turn the procedure completely upside-down.

This will never get old

Book reviews are important, as I've said before, and I'm happy with every one I get - even the funky Goodreads review that called the second half of Songbird "tedious melodrama." (She still gave it three stars, so...)

But this morning I woke up to a review from the Discovering Diamonds book review blog, and this one - well, cue the music for my happy dance!

It's such a wonderful feeling to get a positive review from readers who "get" the book, and it's a huge compliment to me, as a writer of historical fiction, when they say "what I enjoyed was how those difficulties were based on problems which arose from the historical setting. No one here steps out of their period, even for a second. Their attitudes and their circumstances are very 'Tudor', but within that, of course, there is scope for people to behave in very different ways."

You can read the full review here, if you're so inclined. I might see you there - I've already gone back and read it twice. This is a feeling I hope never gets old.

Robin

Young Surrey / Robin at Court

So my second Tudor novel, tentatively titled A Wider World, involves a character from Songbird named Robin Lewis.

Robin is first encountered at the age of 12. He is a socially awkward, obnoxious but talented chorister. He and Bess, my main character, don't hit it off, and it takes some time for them to reconcile as friends. They become close later, but Robin does a few things which appear to only be in his self-interest and are harmful to others.

I thought that was the end of Robin. It was not. After Songbird was submitted, and I started working on my Great Depression book, Robin spoke up and said he needed to explain himself. He didn't think he was getting a fair shake in my telling of Bess's story.

I decided to listen. He was right. He's got quite a tale to tell, which spans from his childhood as a foundling through the royal court, to Oxford, travels to the continent, a return to the court as an undersecretary to Cardinal Wolsey, and then, in the period of time succeeding Songbird, he works with Thomas Cromwell on the dissolution of the monasteries.

Older (wiser?) Robin

The monasteries were an important part of English life in the 16th century, and had been for hundreds on hundreds of years. I knew about the dissolution going in, because I've read a lot of Tudor history, but I only thought of it in terms of the monks, priests, and nuns who were displaced from their religious houses. I hadn't thought of it in terms of ordinary English people.

It turns out they were at least as affected as the religious themselves. From what I've learned, no village in England was more than an hour's walk from some religious house. The monasteries employed people as farm laborers and servants. Many people's homes were on monastery lands. Boys were educated in monastery schools. People ate food grown on monastery farms, sold at lower prices at the village market. Fisherman supplied all of the meatless days at the monasteries - and there were many. Since there were no hospitals, and few doctors, any healing that could be done was accomplished at the monastery's infirmary.

Robin as secretary to Cromwell

All this vanished in four years. I think people would have been content with Henry's change from Catholicism to Church of England, if the only change had been the removal of the Pope. People were Catholic, but their religion was much more personal, and the Pope was in Rome. The local monastery was in their village.

And suddenly, it was all gone. No jobs, no homes, no education, no medical care, and a sudden influx of poor people - who were formerly the ones who might have cared for them. It gave me a whole new perspective on the dissolution, and it is just one more nail in the coffin of Henry VIII's reputation.

Honestly, the more you know about that man the more loathsome he is.

The illustrations for this post are of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, poet and the last man executed by Henry VIII. He was apparently quite a peacock, having had this many portraits done of himself. He also reminds me, in coloring and attitude, of Robin, and the Holbein portrait and the colorful portrait with the green background, are my inspirations for him.

See what I mean? Peacock. Definitely peacock.