I am so excited to be a part of this!!
Good news: today will be the start of a new series! Leading up to the release of the Fun Size Anthology, I will be posting story teasers each week so you can see what to expect from this great collection, and it shall be called Fun Size Fridays! We’ve already had some good cover teasers building up to today’s full reveal, so let’s check it out!
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Hello, hello! Happy New Year!
You know, there is a reason I call this an adventure… The past week is why.
First of all, I got book 1 in The Nihryst series back from the editor. That’s right, The Nihryst is now the title of the series, which brings me to my first announcement: Book 1 is now The Lost Legends. A lot of consideration went into this, and I think it’s the best choice. Not only is it easier for people to say (because apparently Nihryst is difficult or something… ha!), but it will be easier to search for and it gives a better idea of what the story is about.
Which brings me back to editing. Fun fact: I opened my edits and immediately got a migraine. True story. My editor did such an amazing, thorough job. She gave me a lot to consider. So, in the coming weeks, I’ll be going through and fixing it all up, then I will format it and get it sent out to ARC readers. I am aiming to get the ARC out in the beginning of February, but we’ll see.
If you would like to receive an ARC to review, please fill out this form.
Also, I realized a couple days ago that I forgot to get someone to make a map. How does one forget such an important piece of a book?! Yeah, I have no idea, but it happened. I am now on the search to get that taken care of because it is pretty vital to the story with all the islands and kingdoms and traveling.
On a positive note, I did get a cover for The Last Summer, a YA contemporary romance I’m aiming to release in June! I also found an editor who is interested! I am super excited. I haven’t talked about my contemporary books as much because I wasn’t quite sure when they were happening, but it is looking like this one at least is possible as long as I get it written in the next month and a half or so.
I got a cover for my fae duology as well! There isn’t a plan for these books to be released any time soon. I just saw the perfect cover and couldn’t resist.
Speaking of covers…
The cover is being edited for the new title, but it should be done in time to still do the reveal on the 15th!
If you would like to participate in the cover reveal (Jan. 15) and/or the blog tour (Mar. 16-22), please fill out this form.
With the cover reveal will come pre-order information, including how to get a signed paperback. Plus, details on a pre-order incentive and giveaway.
One of the biggest struggles I’m facing is finding the time to work on my own stuff. I freelance edit, run Functionally Fictional, hold several positions with Coffee House Writers, and am part of the indie staff at YA Books Central. Plus, I am starting my master’s at the end of the month, which I am reconsidering, but that’s a whole other story for another time. I am terribly behind on reviews, and I can’t find the time to work on my books because I’m always reading/editing others. So, my goal for the year is to make sure I have “me” time, even if it’s just 30 minutes each day, and write.
Like I said, it’s an adventure. Writing and self-publishing is full of ups and downs. I dove head first into this field, but I’m learning as I go!
Want to get all these details early, as well as exclusive teasers, sneak peeks, and more? Be sure to join my Facebook group: Cait’s Inner Circle.
Hello, hello! For those just joining, I started this blog to talk about writing and publishing my books. As the title suggests, it has been a pretty crazy adventure so far. I basically jumped into all this head first without any idea of what I was doing or with an end goal in mind.
You see, I’ve always loved reading, but I hated writing. That is, until about four years ago when I literally picked up the pen and randomly started writing a fiction book. I had no idea I would one day be running my own book website, freelance editing, and working for an online publication and another book website. I had no idea that I would actually be a published author one day.
But my first book, The Nihryst, comes out March 2020!
The Nihryst is the first in a YA/NA fantasy trilogy about two royal siblings fighting the clock to save their kingdom from their own father. Princess Adalina sets sail with a group, whom she quickly realizes is pirates, to search for lost immortal warriors from her childhood fairy tales. Meanwhile, Prince Shane stumbles across an underground rebellion and tries to help stop a plague spreading throughout their streets.
Read the full blurb on Goodreads, and don’t forget to add it to your TBR!!
The past couple weeks have been pretty exciting. I officially have a cover, I wrote part of book 2, and I set up a lot for the release of the whole trilogy!
Bloggers (or anyone) wanting to participate in the Blog Tour and/or Cover Reveal, please sign up here!
If you want to be the first to get these updates, sneak peeks, and exclusive giveaway opportunities, be sure to join my Facebook group: Cait’s Inner Circle!
Plus, you can sign up for my monthly newsletter here!
Authors: Heather Dowell and Victoria Anders
Get your copy here!
Released: 12/2/19
Blurb:
He’s had this connection to her since the day they met, like she’s the lights on his Christmas tree.
Too bad she’s dating his best friend.
BRAYLEIGH
Today, I age out of foster care, but my foster family lets me stay, allowing me to live with my little brother, protect my foster sister, and graduate high school. But I have a secret that I let slip, and villains don’t respond well to threats. How will I survive the holidays being homeless and carrying a life-altering secret?
ZAIN
Falling for your best friend’s ex-girlfriend shouldn’t happen. But sometimes fate has other plans. That’s how I spend my Christmas break. No matter how hard I try to resist her, it’s futile. Every part of her calls to me subconsciously. I can’t ignore the chemistry. And best of all, she wants me. Not just wants me but needs me. Is she worth losing my best friend?
Will these two hearts come together for Christmas?
Perfect for fans of Amber Smith’s The Way I Used to Be and Abbi Glines’s Until Friday Night. This can be read as a standalone.
WARNING:
This story deals with heavy topics including teen pregnancy and sexual abuse.
Author: Nellie K. Neves
Get your copy here!
Released: 11/1/2019
Blurb:
Life is too short to live on the back burner.
Sawyer Dumont is made of sarcasm and steel. Successful, rich and easy on the eyes, it’s not his fault women don’t stay around long. They should really try to be more interesting. Despite his career as a cardiovascular surgeon, Sawyer knows very little about matters of the heart. So what if his longest lasting relationship is with his father and his quirky aunt who stepped up to raise him? If he could just find them a personal chef to help them through their golden years, then life would be perfect.
Slinging drinks and lighting shots on fire is a far cry from the dream Dakota Brightling had when she moved to California to attend culinary school. At work she watches others live her dream just twelve feet away in the resort restaurant. Story of her life: Close but not close enough. Finding an ad for an in-home chef, she knows she’s the perfect candidate. She’s only missing one thing, a culinary degree. But isn’t chasing your dream worth a little lie or two? It isn’t exactly the path she wanted, but Dakota knows that some of the best recipes are often improvised.
Instantly taken with Henri Dumont, and his sister, Eloise, two eccentric French seniors, Dakota feels like she’s found where she was meant to be all along. With Sawyer’s cynicism undermining her every move, she knows she has a lot to prove. Between her lack of schooling, her overbearing mother who thinks she’s been abducted, and Sawyer breathing down her neck, things are getting hot in the kitchen. Can she pull it all together, or will her culinary career end as just another flash in the pan?
Authors: Raven Blakewood and B.L. Koller
Get your copy here!
Released: 10/30/2019
Blurb
I’m just an average teenage witch secretly dating my vampire boyfriend and trying not to die.
When a night at the carnival results in three misfortunes slowly coming true, I’m left with no option but to reverse my fate. If only I knew how…
Even with a vampire and a werewolf at my side, I might not make it to midnight. Maybe none of us will. Magic got us into this mess, maybe magic can get us out.
*This story is told in dual pov by a teenage witch and the British psychic who cast her fate. Perfect for fans of That’s So Raven. This 2nd edition includes three new chapters and updated interior formatting.
Hello, hello! See, I told you I’d be back soon. This week has been crazy busy, but it’s also been very exciting. There were a lot of highs and lows. It was a good week overall in the writing world, though.
Let’s start with the not so great stuff… I had a really bad couple days of anxiety in the middle of the week that made it difficult to focus on anything. It normally doesn’t get that bad, so it threw me off. That plus being too busy meant not much writing happened.
HOWEVER, I did completely outline book 2, and a lot of behind-the-scenes productivity happened with The Nihryst series! I set up my Amazon KDP account, figured out a tentative schedule for 2020, and put out a tweet to see if bloggers were interested in participating in a blog tour for the release.
I also got some samples from my cover artist (Maria Spada), which blew my mind. It is going to be gorgeous!! She did a wonderful job capturing the feel of the story and putting my dream to life. I am so, so excited for you all to see the finished product.
Plus, The Nihryst is officially on Goodreads and set to publish in March 2020!!
If you want to be the first to get these updates, sneak peeks, and exclusive giveaway opportunities, be sure to join my Facebook group: Cait’s Inner Circle!
Hello, hello! Wow, it has been a really long time. I am so bad at keeping a blog updated, but I am back and determined to do this!
Alright, since the last time I wrote, A LOT has happened. I queried a few agents over the summer, but nothing came of it. About a month after I sent the letters, I started really considering self-publishing. So, it did not bother me to receive a couple rejections. I’ve been working a lot more in the indie community this year, and I really just felt like it was the right choice for me. And I still do.
As my first book, The Nihryst means a lot to me, and I like the idea of being totally in control of how it is put out into the world. With the guidance of some amazing friends, I am officially self-publishing my books!
Since deciding this, I have edited and revised the entire book twice, hired an editor, and have a custom cover in the works! The manuscript was sent to the editor a week ago, and I should be hearing from the cover artist any day now with her sketches and design ideas. I am so so excited!
A lot still has to happen before publishing, though. I need to set up an account on Amazon, add the book to Goodreads, create teasers once I get the cover, schedule the cover reveal and release, and there are more things I want to do for promotion, such as put together a blog tour and attempt to do some sort of release event (yep, I’m going all out because I’m that extra) and maybe some signings. Who knew writing was the easy part? I need a personal assistant for all this… Think one of my sister’s will do it in exchange for me already paying for Disney+, Hulu, and Netflix? Unlikely.
~More about my book~
Tangled/Robin Hood retelling with pirates!
The Nihryst is the first in a YA/NA fantasy trilogy about two royal siblings fighting the clock to save their kingdom from their own father. Princess Adalina sets sail with a group, whom she quickly realizes is pirates, to search for lost immortal warriors from her childhood fairy tales. Meanwhile, Prince Shane stumbles across an underground rebellion and tries to help them stop a plague spreading throughout their streets.
I do not have dates yet, but I am aiming for the whole trilogy to release in 2020, with the first book coming out in March!
Want more exclusive updates, teasers, and giveaway opportunities? Check out my Facebook group: Cait’s Inner Circle
As of January 31, 2019, I have officially finished the first draft of my first full-length novel! Hence this series. I thought it would be neat to not only document my journey but share what I learn along the way. I’ll also share sneak peaks of my work and things that have inspired me along the way.
It all started with a dream. I know, cliché, but it’s completely true. I have always had the most random, usually-weird dreams. Back in mid-October, 2018, I woke up from a dream of pirates and cursed fae. It was somewhere between A Court of Thorns and Roses and Pirates of the Caribbean. The fae were stranded on an island and I was traveling with pirates to find and save them. I told you–super random. I woke up, wrote down the names and details I could remember in my phone, then fell back asleep.
I got up and went about my day, forgetting about the dream until much later. By the time I remembered, a lot of the dream was fuzzy, but the key details were still there with one particular name sticking out: Nihryst. This was the name of the fae, though I also referred to them as the Night Court in my dream because the ACOTAR obsession is so real, my friends.
With the help of the barely-comprehensible notes in my phone, I began writing. I started and I couldn’t stop. I wrote 31,000 words in a week. There was an excitement I had when writing this story that I’d never felt before. The story felt more original and creative than my others, and I was proud to have come up with such an idea.
And I’m still proud! It has grown so much since I began. There are now two POVs and a whole subplot that didn’t exist during those first two months of writing. I had this vague plot for the main character, but once I started focusing on another, the story deepened and really took off. The original story is still very much there as the focus, but with the other characters and stories added, the whole thing is rounded out more.
I really love my story, and I hope others will, too. I was advised to “step away” from it for a while after finishing the first draft, but I’m eager to jump back in. It’s been about a week and a half and I already want to start editing.
There is a long road ahead of me, but I’m hopeful and excited. Never in a million years did I think I’d be here. I plan on writing about my experiences, dilemmas, and accomplishments here along the way. Maybe we’ll learn a few things together!
Without further ado, a working synopsis of The Nihryst:
Throughout her life, Princess Adalina grew up hearing stories about the legendary group of immortal warriors, called the Nihryst, who were cursed and abandoned by her ancestors on an unknown island over a century earlier. As an adult, Ada overhears a plot that threatens her kingdom and their treaties with allying countries. After hiring a crew of sailors, she sets off in search of the Nihryst with hopes that they might be able to help save her people and that she can keep her childhood vow to break their curse. The sailors don’t know Ada is the princess or what exactly she’s looking for, and she doesn’t know that they are actually pirates. Together, they fight against their secrets and each other as time quickly dwindles, threatening everyone she loves.
Hello! I’m Caitlin–reader, writer, Hufflepuff, and cookie enthusiast! I have loved reading my entire life, however, writing is a completely different story.
I am a full-time online student, attending Southern New Hampshire University in pursuit of my BA in Forensic Psychology, with minors in English Language and Literature and Criminal Justice. I’m also active within the school’s online community, where I am a Peer Leader, the Vice President of the Book Club, and the Secretary of the Psychology Club. I just applied to be a Peer Tutor, too. I like to keep busy obviously!
In the fall of 2015, I decided I wanted to write my own fiction book so that I could put everything I wanted in it. Until that point in my life, all I had ever written were papers for school–which I hated. I also kept a poorly-written, boring blog that basically served as a journal.
On a whim, I joined a writing group in December 2016. I began writing nonfiction articles and quickly worked my way up to being a team editor. When a fellow editor decided to create her own writing community, I quickly jumped on board and joined Coffee House Writers (CHW) in June 2017, leaving the other group. I am now a Chief Operations Officer, an Assistant Editor, the Advertising Supervisor, and a Writer for CHW. Through CHW, I typically write nonfiction, but in my free time I write fiction.
I am currently working on a variety of YA/NA fiction stories. I have started and stopped at least half a dozen stories in the last three years. In November 2017, I participated in my first NaNoWriMo and wrote a short story that goes with that original series I first started with. It was my first completed story, though it still needs a lot of editing.
In October 2018, I began writing a completely new story based on a dream (I have the most random dreams). Within the first week I wrote 31,000 words. I had never felt such excitement about writing. As of January 31, 2019, the first draft of my first full-length novel is complete. Thus, this blog was created to write about that journey, share my experiences, and keep people updated.
If I’m not working on any of this, I’m probably reading. I’ve always loved reading, but in the last couple years it has turned into an obsession. I love books so much that I started Functionally Fictional. I put together a small team to review books; I also write other book blog posts and promote books.
Functionally Fictional takes up most of my spare time, but I can also be found frequently binge-watching Doctor Who, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, or re-watching Harry Potter for the 700th time. I’m also a concert addict, I love to paint, and I love blaring and singing along to musical soundtracks when I have the house to myself.
I am excited to start this “Adventures in Writing” series. As someone who had little knowledge about writing and the publishing world until recently, I’m learning as I go. It is my hope that sharing my journey will help another writer, or at least inspire them to keep trying!
Happy Writing!
