Month: April 2019

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter. We had a good time with friends. After that was episode #2 of the final season of Game of Thrones. I’m getting a little nervous as we near the big battle that everyone’s been waiting on for ten years. 😳

There are two more events that I’m equally nervous about this week. One of them is the outcome of The Avengers. I will be at the theater Thursday night gnawing my nails down to the quick 😆 The other event is the cover reveal of my very first published novel, “A Nocturnal Rendezvous,” which takes place Thursday as well.

Actually, my cover has been complete for quite some time…like months—so, I’ve had a long time to marinate on it. I remember when my designer Jeanette first showed it to me after I sent her some pitiful drafts that I’d done in PowerPoint. I screamed, “THAT’S IT!”

Prior to that moment of glee, I’d searched weeks for the perfect image that would tell my character(s) story. And for a long time, I wasn’t having any luck. You know, the crazy thing about getting started in this indie publishing biz is that many of us begin with a very small budget. Therefore, almost all of us go the paid stock image route. So, throughout my quest for the perfect photo, I ran across images that were used on many other wonderful indie book covers out there. It was surreal—almost kind of like seeing the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, ya know? 😄

I guess the trick to using stock images on your cover is to be as creative with it as possible, and I hope that’s what we’ve done here. Stay tuned on my TK Cherry, Author Facebook Page as well as on Instagram and Twitter for the big reveal on Thursday morning at 7:30 EST!

Oh…by the way, if you are a member of Cherryville, my official reader’s group on Facebook, you’ll get to peep the cover a day early. 🤫

I hope you have an epic week. It is the last full week of April, after all. 😉 — TK 🍒

Hey everyone! I’m in this phase right now where I’m making a ton of mistakes—and as I do, I’m filing the incident under: “Remember when you tried this the first time?” 😆 Most of my screw-ups have occured on Instagram. The first time I posted a video on IG (my first teaser trailer), I forgot to scale it, so the subtitles were cut off. I quickly learned from that experience and did it right when I posted my second teaser trailer last weekend. Then on my birthday last week, I posted my cover teaser. Another oops moment. It cut off the bottom half of my page that stated it was available for pre-order on Amazon. So now I know that on April 25^th, I have to post my cover reveal on top of a blurred background. I also learned that if fancy Unicode font/art work nicely on Facebook, that doesn’t necessarily translate over to IG. The text that accompanied my collage reveal was all over the place. Yeesh!

One HUGE lesson I learned today is to never let strangers beta read for you. I had a very negative experience when I advertised for beta assistance in a very large group last weekend. One member answered the call and it became a total nightmare which included name-calling and making false accusations. Not cool. I’ve since removed myself from the group and will no longer be soliciting betas that I don’t know.

I’m certain that more mishaps will occur leading up to my June 7th release date, but I’m taking everything in stride. This is my very first rodeo in the world of indie publishing and self-promotion. And even though I’ve worked in marketing for ten years, it’s very difficult promoting yourself, especially when you’re a bona fide introvert, haha! But hey…I’m doing this! – TK 🍒

Yesterday, I tidied up the edits I received from my editor and formatted the outcome into an epub. I also sent a copy over to a good friend to read over the weekend. This is the final review phase before the manuscript for A Nocturnal Rendezvous goes out to the formatter for finishing. Once formatting is done, it’s ARC time!

I can’t wait to get this book into the hands of some of you wonderful bloggers out there. Hopefully this story is satisfying enough to get a little buzz going for my debut. After the bloggers get ARCs, I will open it up to readers who like posting reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, etc. Stay tuned here and on my social media forums for more information on these two special opportunities to read my new book before it comes out on June 7th. Also, if you subscribe to my newsletter, I’m about 99.99999% sure that you will be getting an exclusive look at chapter 1 way before ARCs come out! ☺️

Anywho, the photo is me going over the first few post-edited chapters this afternoon while watching the Twilight Zone marathon because I was too distracted to write. And now, I must get back to writing.

Until later! – TK 🍒