Fantasy Author
Good news, everyone! No, Flying High has not come out earlier than expected. Buuuut… after unfortunately having to be put on hold seemingly indefinitely due to the pandemic and other life circumstances, book two of The Loft, Strictly Business, is now officially in audio!
Hello, everyone. I’m really sorry to make you all mad, but Flying High–as some of you who might’ve pre-ordered the book may already be aware of–will unfortunately not be coming out tomorrow. I really don’t have a good excuse this time, except that in my haste to get the book uploaded on time in the middle of an extremely stressful week, I literally uploaded the wrong manuscript. At least, I’m pretty sure I did, but by the time I realized my blunder, it was too late to go back and check, as it was already in the phase of publishing on KDP when changes can no longer be made.
I thought I might be able to exploit a sorta-loophole the night before release day (meaning, tonight), by uploading the correct manuscript at midnight GMT, or 8:00 my time, pray that by the time it was 12:00 my time the changes went through, and then ask KDP to push the updated content to any readers who had received the wrong version of the book earlier.
Buuuut… it gets worse. I have no idea what I did to deserve such bad luck, but when I went to look for the correct final draft to upload, it turns out that a number of edits I’d made hadn’t been saved, and what I’d thought was the final draft was simply not there. So, after dramatically banging my head on my desk and weeping pathetically for a bit, I really started to panic, and that’s when I proceeded to make more dumb mistakes. First, I sent a desperate email to KDP to ask them to pretty please push back my pre-order’s release date a few days so that I could re-upload the book once I redid those edits. Unfortunately, as it was already past the upload deadline, nothing could be done. Normally, I’d just accept that I’d have to go back to plan A and try to use that timezone loophole to sneak in the new manuscript, but for the past several days I’ve still been incredibly busy and burned out from work and things that are still going on with my family, I was starting to panic that I wasn’t going to be able to make those changes to the final draft again in time.
So, here we are now, with another long-winded explanation you didn’t want, for why a book you probably no longer care to wait for has been delayed for another week. The bright side for me is, I discovered far too late that due to the pandemic, KDP is temporarily relaxing their strict penalties for delaying or canceling pre-orders, so since I asked pretty-please, I am now able to set up pre-orders in the future. But… that still means that you won’t be getting Flying High until August 22. I’m so sorry and so embarrassed that I keep pushing this book back by a week and canceling pre-orders; all I can do is promise you that this is the last time, and hope that you believe me. And another bright spot: for those of you who like audiobooks, production finally just wrapped up on Strictly Business, so it should be coming to Audible soon (though their review process can take anywhere from a couple days to a month, so who knows).
Thank you all again for sticking by me; trust me, I know just how frustrating this is, and if you think this book is no longer worth the wait, I completely understand and wouldn’t blame you at all. But if you don’t mind hanging around for a little bit longer, I promise you you’re in for a fantastic continuation of Kiera and Caleb’s story.
Well, I promised you my thoughts on the movie that briefly took Netflix by storm two months ago, and if you were wondering what I was referring to on Twitter last month, now you know.
Hello, my lovely readers! I hope you’ve been doing well the last few days. Thanks so much for hanging in there while my attention from finishing up Flying High. It’s been a rough and stressful week so far and it’s not over yet, but my family member that was going through a health crisis is doing better and things in general are starting to settle down.
But to tide you over until Flying High officially comes out next Friday, how about an exclusive excerpt?
Hi, everyone! Just another quick update. After some serious thought, I’ve decided to give myself an extra window of safety and postpone the release officially until August 14th. I apologize that this is a few days later than what I initially said it might be in my earlier blog post, but I genuinely think this is for the best. I have a lot on my plate right now and I would be devastated if risked screwing up this book that I’ve worked so hard on for way too long as it is by pressuring myself to put it out before I’m 100% sure I’m ready. And as I’m not sure how things will be going with me for the rest of the week, hopefully that extra six days will give me some room to breathe.
Apologies for being so vague about what’s going on; I tend to think of myself as a pretty private person, and I’m never quite sure about how much about my personal life to share on my author platform. I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable, or worry that I’m putting too much information about myself or my loved ones out there that they might not be comfortable with being shared. I really hope I’m not making this sound scarily serious, please don’t worry about me. I will say that someone close to me is experiencing a health crisis (not COVID related), and I’m not sure yet how things will pan out over the next few days. All I know is that I can’t devote the attention and energy to this book required to have the final manuscript uploaded and ready to go in less than 24 hours from now, as I would have to to keep my original August 8th release date.
So, while that pre-order unfortunately had to be canceled, I did luckily have a back-up pre-order set up that was initially supposed to be for the next book. So you do still have a chance to order the book before Aug. 14th for $2.99 on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and the book will still be available at that price on all retailers for a week afterward as well.
Thank you all so much again for being patient and putting up with the delay. Hope everyone is doing well this week. See you all again soon.
Hello, everyone. Sorry I don’t have better news for you all, but I wanted to give you a heads up that the release of Flying High that was originally scheduled for this Saturday (Aug. 8th) may or may not have to be delayed for a few days. Something personal has come up that I have to prioritize, and although I’m trying as hard as I can to have the final draft of the book ready to upload before the Amazon pre-order deadline tomorrow evening (Aug. 4th), I’m not 100% confident I’ll be able to make it happen. I apologize to all of you who may have pre-ordered the book already; if it ends up not going live on the 8th, I can promise you that it will still be available for its pre-order/release week price of $2.99 when it does come out, which should be no later than Aug. 11th. For those of you who might not typically pre-order books, Amazon does not charge for it until the book is delivered on release day, so if it does end up being canceled, you will not have to pay twice if you still choose to buy the book when it does come out. Also, a few of you might have pre-ordered it early on before I decided to drop the release price from $3.99 to $2.99, so in case it does end up going live on time, I apologize as well that you ended up paying more; that was poor planning on my part.
Again, thank you all for your patience with this. I can at least promise those of you who’ve been around for a while that this won’t be another Loft series situation where I leave you hanging for 2 years for a sequel. I will admit that I did fumble this planned back-to-back release a bit, getting overconfident that since this was originally one book split into two, I could easily have book two out in a super short amount of time. And things were actually going great until yesterday.
Again, I just want to reiterate that there is a chance that I could get it uploaded in time, but I don’t want to overextend myself when there are other, more urgent things dividing my attention, and I don’t want to deliver an inferior product to you. I made an aggravating mistake with High Risk and ended up uploading a draft that hadn’t been fully edited initially, and I don’t want something like that to happen again. Thank you all for understanding while I deal with this emergency. I’m still very much looking forward to sharing the next chapter of this story with you, and I hope you don’t mind waiting a few extra days.
Take care,
Siena
Good news, everyone! At long, looooong last, High Risk is finally a reality! It’s been a wild and nerve-wracking few days for me getting ready for this book to go live, and after so long I can’t believe it’s finally here. I want to laugh and cry and maybe throw up just a little from the agony and ecstasy of waiting to see if people will love or hate my book.
Continue reading “Guess Who Finally Has a New Book Out?”Hello, friends! I’m so sorry once again for disappearing on you for such a long time. I know that many of you who’ve been with me for a while have been anxiously waiting for the next installment of The Loft as well as High Risk. I’m sure a lot of you were starting to wonder if I was ever going to come back to my unfinished business, and for that, I apologize. 2019 was not a good year for me for many reasons, in terms of my mental health, and in dealing with some family shakeups including the passing of my grandfather and uncle, both of whom I was very close to. I try not to get too uncomfortably personal on my blog or social media in my author persona, but considering it’s been ages in Romancelandia time since I’ve published anything, I feel as though I owe it to all of you to at least give you somewhat of an idea as to what’s been going on with me.
Admittedly, I’ve struggled a lot with feeling like a disappointment, sometimes wondering if I should simply let my romance pen name die a quiet death since it’s been so long. But writing these stories has meant so much to me, and despite the many, many setbacks, moments of self-doubt, and all the drafts they’ve been through before I felt confident I could share them with you, I know I can’t simply give this up.Â
And with all that being said, I do finally have some exciting news for you! At long last, the wait has paid off (for me, at least), and starting early next month you can expect a flurry of new books coming your way! Well, maybe not a flurry, but I’m feeling impatient with this backlog of finished and mostly-finished books I’ve been working on but haven’t been ready to publish for various reasons, so now you can expect at least a couple in rapid-fire succession over the next two months, starting with Tangled Love! Yes, I know I’ve gone back and forth over whether or not it or High Risk would come out first, but now book three of The Loft definitely will be, in just over a week! Not to worry, though High Risk will be here shortly, towards the end of February.Â
I would like to emphasize, though, that these are estimated dates, despite my confidence that Tangled Love, at the very least, will be hitting Amazon and other stores in about a week. But I recognize that at various points in the past I’ve made overly-optimistic promises to have books out on certain dates, only to be forced to push back the deadline and then slip a bit into a self-defeating depressive funk over my disappointment. I’m trying as best I can to avoid that now, both for my own sake, and for the sake of giving you guys the best book possible.
That being said, though, I have yet more good news! The Loft series is finally coming to audio, with audiobook versions of the first three books currently in production! I’m anticipating a mid-March release for Whip Smart, which will be available through Audible, Amazon, and iTunes. I’ve really started to get into audiobooks in the past few months, so I’ve been pretty excited about this, and I can’t wait for you to hear the fantastic pair of narrators I’me working with bring Tera and Eric to life. So, if audiobooks are your thing, look for updates on that in the coming weeks/months.
Thank you so much again for sticking with me through thick and thin. It means the world to me to know that there are those of you out there eager to find out what happens next with Eric and Tera, to fall in love with Kiera and Caleb, and to just explore the world I’ve created through my stories. These characters might be fictional, but writing their stories and spending time with them is often very cathartic for me and gets me through the tough times, and it’s a wonderful feeling being able to share that with others. I can’t wait to share the next story with all of you. Until then, stay classy, and happy reading… đ
In the meantime, though, Whip Smart and Strictly Business are currently on sale, and in celebration of the upcoming release of book three, both books are included in the BIG WEEKEND BLAST sale, courtesy of Bookfunnel. Looking for a great new romance read to tide you over until Tangled Love is out? Well, look no further, because this fabulous multi-author sale has all the free and discounted romance you could ever want in just about every subgenre!
Hello, my lovely and eternally patient readers. I’m sure you’re probably all wondering where I’ve been since my last update about two months ago promising that I’d finally have a new book coming very soon. Or, if you’ve been following me for a while, you’re probably just disappointed but not surprised by my unscheduled hiatus.
Needless to say, I’m disappointed in myself as well, and I’m very sorry for leaving all of you hanging. For those of you who’ve been waiting since last year(!) for the release of High Risk as well as the next installment of The Loft, as well as those of you who are new readers, I know you deserve so much better. All I can say is that I’m sorry, and do my best to explain that this past year–and the past few months in particular–have been very rough mental-health wise, in addition to a number of other shakeups in my life. I feel as though this has been my excuse in the past too many times, and it breaks my heart that until now it’s been such a struggle for me to put out books at a faster pace. I actually have somewhat of a backlog of partially-finished works that I’m cautiously optimistic that I could finish and publish at fairly quick succession if I really buckled down. And I’m really hoping that now that I’m finally reaching a place of greater stability in my life again, I can finally get focused and organized enough to put out a few things within the next few months.
But as good as it can feel to get things off my chest, it wouldn’t be fair for me to unload all of that on you. So, I’m going to look on the bright side of things and share with you what you have to look forward to from me in the coming weeks and months! At long last, after having gone through hell and back and through more revisions and scrapped ideas than I can count, High Risk will finally be out on February 12. And while I’d originally planned on releasing it as a KU exclusive for at least its first three months, after some debate I’ve decided that a wide release is the way to go. So all of you lovely non-Kindle readers out there can enjoy Kiera and Caleb’s story as well! Unfortunately, due to my various setbacks, this does mean that the audiobook edition I’d hoped to have out by the end of the year won’t be happening just yet, but look for it sometime early next spring.
But what about Tangled Love? Yes, I know that I’d said in my last update that my plans hand changed, and book three of Eric and Tera’s story would be coming out before High Risk. As it turned out, though, the final draft of High Risk ended up coming together quicker than Tangled Love did, and for various story-related reasons, it just felt like it made sense to me personally to release it first after all. But not to worry, Loft enthusiasts; Tangled Love will also be coming your way very soon! And in the meantime, the Nook edition still available for pre-order, now at the reduced price of $3.99!
As for sequels and other future books? Well, as I’ve said, I already have a lot of work done on several books, most significantly books 2 and 4 of The Risky Business Duet and The Loft, respectively. As such, I’m really hoping to release both of these not long after the previously-mentioned books. Ambitious, I know, but rather than making any concrete promises that I’ll end up being incredibly depressed over if I can’t keep them, I just want to share my hopes and dreams with all of you. At the very least, I’d like to have Kiera and Caleb’s duology completed by the end of Feb, and a satisfying three or four book arc for Tera and Eric (the plan is still for 5 total books in The Loft, but tbh what happens after book 4 is still a little hazy and ever-changing.) by the end of the spring.
Before this post starts to get reeeeaaaallllly long-winded, I just want to thank you all again so much for sticking around. It kills me that I’ve had so many setbacks, but I want you to know that I’ve been hard at work to make the wait worth your while. Each character I create and each story I write means so much to me (maybe a little too much at times), and it makes me so happy to be able to share them with others. I can’t wait to share High Risk with all of you.
In the meantime, I’m participating in a free giveaway courtesy of Bookfunnel: Fall in Love with Romance! This month-long giveaway features a whopping 130 books that are sure to heat things up as the weather gets colder, from dozens of amazing authors. So grab a book or several before they’re gone, and maybe discover a new favorite author along the way!
Hello, lovely readers! Just a quick announcement first: unfortunately, the release of Tangled Love will be postponed for just a few days, until Sept. 18th. Sorry to do this, but I did an oops and accidentally planned the release when I’m supposed to be going away for a wedding, and I’d rather be around to make sure release day goes off without a hitch (since I’ll be busy and probably won’t be around my laptop very much). I know I’m pushing it pretty close to the release of High Risk at the end of the month, but I hope it won’t be too annoying. Actually, considering there are things (particularly a certain character) that will be introduced or revisited in Tangled Love that will later become significant in the Risky Business Duet, I’m pretty pleased releasing then in quick succession looks like it’ll work out okay, even though I probably should’ve planned for a bit more breathing room between the two.
But if it’s any consolation for the postponement, how about an exclusive excerpt? This one’s just a quickie and there will be more where this came from in the next few days, but I hope it gets you intrigued for what’s going on between Eric and Tera. Just so you know, it is mildly NSFW and obliquely references past abuse.
Continue reading “An Excerpt from Tangled Love!”