“Question Everything” is headed your way soon and I can’t wait!

Hey there happy reader,

For every one step forward I seem to take, I retreat another two steps backward on the way to publication for my romantic suspense novel, “Question Everything.”

If it’s not one thing, it’s been another. An extra round of revisions. A computer glitch with Microsoft Word. And now waiting for the final cover files. Amazon doesn’t let me upload the manuscript for pre-sale without the cover, so we wait. And wait. And wait.

I mean, I think this artwork is worth waiting for, so…

It’s just another level of frustration for me, but I’ll get over it, I’m sure! I feel bad for fellow indie author Maria Luis, who when finally, after multiple delays uploaded her book to the platform, the gremlins at Amazon deleted the ending of the story. Anyone who pre-ordered a copy received the corrupted file. Sheesh, Amazon. You had one job!

But I can leave you with one more piece of “Question Everything” that I haven’t shared before now. 

I know I’ve told you that the idea for this book came to me in a dream. It did, but when I reflected on that, I realized why I was dreaming about memory loss. One of my closest friends is dealing with early onset dementia, and I must have been thinking about her and the journey she’s on. She’s shared with me how scary it is not to remember the sequence of common events, or faces, or names of people she’s known for years. Even the dark is frightening to her now.

When we dream, it’s often to sort out the problems we confront in our daily lives. I guess I was looking for a solution, one that unfortunately doesn’t exist. All I can do is share a story, visit with her, and be a friend. That’s all any of us can do, really. So, this book is dedicated to her, and while she no longer can read for pleasure, I can read it to her…

“Question Everything” will hit the shelves soon!

Hey there happy reader!

The wheels are most definitely in motion! “Question Everything” will be available by the end of this month and I’m extremely excited for you to read it…

I know I’ve said this before, but… 

Writing the book is easy. Marketing the book is hard.

I’m lucky enough to have help with this, though, and the good people who do just that sent me a long list of possible ad copy – written by AI🙄

I know I’ve said this before as well – I don’t like Chat GPT and will never use it in my writing.

I don’t see the point of letting a computer tell my stories. I believe that the human experience is best recounted by other humans, and while computers have their place in the world, I don’t want one doing the critical thinking it takes to compose good fiction. Clearly, I’ll be rewriting the ad copy that was sent to me earlier today… I just can’t help myself!!

And speaking of computer mishaps… 

I was babysitting our younger grandson recently. He’s almost ten months old (already!) and pretty mobile. He’s standing, but still crawling, and he’s fast. I had barely turned around before he found the Roomba vacuum, turned it on and watched as it began to travel around the room! He found this to be hysterically funny; I found it terrifying.

He laughed as he chased the thing around the house. I could not figure out how to get it to stop – I had to call my son at work and ask him to remotely make it go back to its home base. I was worried that it was going to eat a toy and blow itself up. Geez. Whatever happened to pushing the vacuum around the house yourself??

All the more reason for me to lock myself away and write! 

Once “Question Everything” is out in the world, I’ll start to outline my (still untitled) historical novel about Stonehenge. It promises to be an interesting winter for this author!

I hope you take the time for yourself to get outside while you still can. The leaves are doing their thing, and the colors are spectacular…

I can’t wait to put this novel in your hands!!

Hey there happy reader!

I feel like I’ve run a marathon carrying my new romantic suspense novel, “Question Everything” under one arm, striding toward the finish line ever so slowly. From initial concept, to writing, then rewriting it FOUR times to satisfy my very meticulous editor (I thank my lucky stars to have found her!), this book is almost ready for its close-up.

I think the artwork speaks for what lies between the covers of this page-turner, but here’s the back cover copy as well:

Maeve Byrne needs a lifeline.

Betrayed and alone, she escapes with her daughter in a heart-pounding effort to protect them from the danger chasing her through the dark night. If only she’d slowed down before that sharp curve on a slick road, she might have had a chance to find her way to freedom. At least until the tree, and the inevitable crash that upended all her plans…

Kyle Walsh should have been at work as a detective for the Boston PD.

Instead, he was running from his demons, ruminating about the one terrible mistake that had twisted his life upside down. When he witnessed Maeve’s car accident, instinct kicked in. What he found there would change him forever, tangling him in a web of mystery that had him doubting every certainty he’d thought he’d ever known.

Question Everything… because when secrets unravel, the truth becomes too powerful to hide!

*************************

This book has a unique plot twist that drives the story.

The female protagonist, Maeve Byrne, loses her memory in a car accident and while pieces of her old life begin to resurface, her current life circumstance makes her wonder if she will ever have the strength to leave the warmth and protection of Detective Kyle Walsh. She knows that she’s running from something, but she can’t remember what it is.

All Maeve does know is that Kyle is someone who she’d like to get to know better. When her worlds collide, real trouble finds her…

Intrigued? I sure hope so!

If I’ve done my job right, this book will leave you turning the pages way past your bedtime! It’s going to hit Amazon on October 22^nd. I’ll drop the pre-sale link here soon.

Hey there happy reader!

Sweater weather has reached us here in the Northeast. The mornings and evenings are cool enough for an additional layer if you’re going outside. It’s my favorite time of year… I love the smell of a fireplace when it’s being put to good use, the sound of leaves crunching under my sneakers when I take my daily walk and the crunch of a really good apple!

Interestingly, our older son has a friend who has staked his claim to fame as the “apple rater.” He takes this fruit and its flavor super seriously. The New York Times agrees that this guy has a rating system of the different apple varieties that you can trust.

☝️ 7 Apple Picking Tips From the Guy Behind Apple Ratings ☝️

No matter which type of apple you prefer (I love mine baked into a pie!) this is the season to find an orchard that lets you pick your own bushel or two. I can’t think of a more enjoyable way to spend an autumn afternoon.

As the days and nights get chillier, it’s also my favorite time of year to expand my TBR list of books.

I have so many titles I’d like to read – Long Island by Colm Toibin is at the top of my list. It’s the sequel to his bestseller, Brooklyn and it continues the story of Ellis Lacey, an Irish immigrant who marries her boyfriend Tony and moves to the suburbs. When she discovers his infidelity, she returns to Ireland to reconnect with her past. I can’t wait to pull out my favorite knit blanket and settle in for some me time with this terrific novel!

Speaking of terrific (or at least I hope you think so!) novels, my next book is almost ready for publication. I’ve been telling you about it for so long, but it’s very close to making its presence known.

This is a story that came to me, fully formed, in a dream.

It was almost like I watched a movie in my own head and just wrote it all down. Well… almost! Since I’d never written a romantic suspense novel before, there was a steeper learning curve than I expected.

Leaving clues within the narrative without giving away the twist at the end is harder than I could have ever imagined. This book took me so much longer than I thought it would to revise. My editor had me do four different rounds of revisions to get it all right. Whew.

It was an exhausting process, but now that I’m on the other side of it, I think it might be my strongest book yet! When you finally read Maeve and Kyle’s story, I hope that you’ll agree that it was worth the wait.

It will be available on Amazon very soon. 

My target date is October 22^nd

Mark your calendars!

Hi there happy reader!

I was in Los Angeles for a few days last week to see our grandson. He’s eighteen months old now, and a bundle of energy and fun.

These knees should tell you everything you need to know about him.

Always on the go, little bumps and bruises don’t stop him from running joyfully and exploring his world with more wonder than I ever remember having myself!

We love to read books together. 

He has a special place in his heart for one of his favorite titles, “Stick and Stone.” The story of unlikely friends –a twig and a rock — he can recite each line and does so with glee. 

When I found a different title illustrated by the same artist, I just knew he had to have it to add to his library.

A little boy wakes up to find that the answer to anything he asks for is yes. 

Pizza for breakfast? Yes! Ice cream whenever he wants it? Yes! A late bedtime? Yes! You get the picture, right?

In one of the hundreds of times I read this adorable story to him, I started to wonder about what would happen if as adults, we were to say yes more often. It’s so easy to say no, isn’t it? No, I don’t want to try, no, I don’t want to risk failing, no, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Now imagine how different life could be if we didn’t hesitate to take that chance and say yes.

That is what I did when I sat down to write my first novel, and it’s what I still do every time I begin a new project.

I give myself permission to stretch my mind and imagination. To test the limits of my love for words, for stories, for reaching out to readers who I’ve not yet met; all of it was made possible by allowing myself to say yes. BTW – I highly recommend it!

Pumpkin spice is in the air!

Hey there happy reader!

I’m happy to say that I survived my family vacation to the coast of Oregon. The Pacific Northwest is spectacular, and the weather was picture perfect. The true joy, however, was watching our two young grandsons interact with one another.

This guy was a terrific traveler.

He enjoyed the long ride – we did a lot of walking up and down the aisle of the airplane…

And our eighteen-month-old loved our daily hikes!

We found an enchanted forest that had the largest wild mushrooms growing everywhere…

Look at the magical teepee we found. 👇

Doesn’t it look like wood gnomes should be lurking about? Or that they shot the movie “Twilight” here??

All in all, it was a blast.

But now I’m back behind this computer screen, trying to finish the revisions for “Question Everything” and get the pre-sale going!

It always seems like getting the technical stuff done for publishing a new book is such a tall mountain to climb. You’ve been so patient and at this point, all I want to do is put this fantastic romantic suspense novel into your hands…

Or I will do that, right after I finish all that post-vacation laundry! 😅

It’s all about getting the word out about “Question Everything!”

Hey there happy reader,

Last week I revealed the cover for my new romantic suspense novel, “Question Everything” and so many of you wrote to me to let me know how much you liked it! Thank you! I appreciate your feedback, and some of your comments led me to tweak the artwork a bit more…

It’s a small detail, but we’ve added a car with headlights driving through the dark road.

I think it adds the focal point that was missing, and I hope you’ll agree. My next step in the process was writing the cover copy that goes along with the image. It’s tougher than you might think to put together a gripping description, no longer than 150 words, that doesn’t give away too much of the story yet leaves the reader with the desire to find out what truly happens between the covers. It takes a lot of time and effort to get it right.

The above is the first cover copy I ever wrote.

The year was 1981(!) and it was for “Reap the Savage Wind,” a project I purchased from the slush pile at my job as an editorial assistant at Ace Books.

This was a huge learning curve for me. My boss, the editorial director of the company, tasked me with finding a bestseller and walking it through the entire process from manuscript to published product. That book became a New York Times bestseller, and the back cover copy won a People magazine “best of the decade” award.

Of course, it’s dated now, I mean, “brutal degradation?” UGH! But I learned how to condense and then use the elements a reader considers when looking for her next great read.

The process is a bit different now. I have an online tool that helps me target keywords that may trigger a response from my customer, drawing her into the description and hopefully resulting in her wanting to push the purchase button.

Using those three or four keywords, I crafted a short description that I hope will intrigue the buyer enough to take a chance with this title.

Here it is…

Maeve Byrne needs a lifeline.

Betrayed and alone, she escapes with her daughter in a heart-pounding effort to protect them from the danger chasing her through the dark night. If only she’d slowed down before that sharp curve on a slick road, she might have had a chance to find her way to freedom. At least until the tree, and the inevitable crash that upended all her plans…

Kyle Walsh should have been at work as a detective for the Boston PD.

Instead, he was running from his demons, ruminating about the one terrible mistake that had twisted his life upside down. When he witnessed Maeve’s car accident, instinct kicked in. What he found there would change him forever, tangling him in a web of mystery that had him doubting every certainty he’d thought he’d ever known.

Question Everything… because when secrets unravel, the truth becomes too powerful to hide!

Can you guess the keywords? Should I tell you what they are? I’ll drop them at the bottom of this newsletter…

Hey there happy reader!

Being an indie author has its challenges. It turns out that writing the books is the easy part – who would have guessed that! The truly difficult thing about doing this on “your own” is getting the word out about your work. It turns out that the most efficient way to do that is through the various social media channels available to all of us with a stroke of the keyboard.

Before I embarked on this journey, I had no social media presence at all.

My attitude was basically that if I hadn’t spoken to a person in the past thirty years, why contact them now? But I’ve come to understand that this crazy world of internet communication is a necessary tool if you want to have anyone find your books in the vast expanse of the world wide web.

All this to say, that when I switched social media teams recently, there were lots of suggestions of things that I needed to do for a more updated presence.

Now, let me assure you that I do all my own writing for any post you see attached to my name, and that will never change. I won’t ever be represented by words that are not mine. But this new team believes in more TikTok and less Facebook, more reels and stories on Instagram and less static picture posts.

And not only that.

They hated the cover I had ready to go for my new romantic suspense novel, “Question Everything.” I was not happy to hear it, but I had to keep an open mind and accept criticism where necessary and make a change.

The result might just be one of the most dynamic book covers I’ve ever had for one of my novels. Here it is…

What do you think? Dark and mysterious with a little bit of foreboding for good measure? I hope you like it as much as I do…

I also hope that you’ll follow me on TikTok. I’ve been working hard, trying to make engaging videos on a variety of topics related to indie publishing. By far, my most successful one so far had to do with why I defend “Fifty Shades of Grey” as a game-changer for the romance industry. Check out my argument on TikTok. You can find me there @htcohen. I’m going to keep pushing the boundaries of my comfort zone and see where it leads me!

Go Team USA!

Hey there happy reader,

Are you watching the Olympics? I am and I’m loving it!! There are so many sports that I don’t participate in (lol, I only play Pickleball, not yet an Olympic sport!) but that I love to watch. Tennis, diving, swimming, and of course, gymnastics. I so admire these athletes. Both their focus and determination make me want to try harder and do better at everything. It’s truly inspiring to see the definition of “a dream come true” when one of them sets a personal record or wins a medal.

But by far, the most fantastic feat I’ve witnessed at the games so far was Celine Dion’s performance at the end of the opening ceremony.

I’m sure you’ve seen it by now, but just in case, here it is again…

What an emotional tour de force!

After struggling for years with “Stiff Person’s Syndrome” she was able to deliver the show of a lifetime from the Eiffel Tower in the rain! Plus, she looked gorgeous in the shimmering Christian Dior dress that took over 1,000 hours to make by hand!

Celine Dion’s Dazzling Dior Gown at the Olympics Took 1,000 Hours to Make

Watching Celine sing made me realize how much sacrifice artists endure to be seen or heard.

In some interviews I’ve watched since last Friday night’s opening ceremony, Celine has said that she sings because she “has to,” that she is drawn to the music and performing makes her feel complete. I think that’s true of most true artists. While talent is a large component of their success, it’s the drive, the determination, and the willingness to overcome absolutely any obstacle in their way to live their truth.

Celine Dion has a disease that makes her vocal cords feel paralyzed, yet she pushed herself to try and in doing so, may have set the bar impossibly high for anyone else at the games to surpass her moment. I could watch it over again and again…

And speaking of Christian Dior, if you haven’t watched “The New Look” on Apple TV, you’re missing out.

It’s the story of the designer, his connection to the rise of couture in Paris after WWII, and his very close and special relationship with his younger sister, a resistance fighter captured by the Nazis. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I was glued to each episode!

I miss my characters more than you can imagine!

Hey there happy reader!

I’ve FINALLY shipped the full manuscript for “Question Everything” to my editor, and I’m already missing my protagonists, Mia and Kyle. 

I try to make my characters real. I think that readers want to identify with them, and details about them matter. Hair color, eye color, height… that’s important. But their core values, their beliefs, and their aspirations are equally as important. If I do my job well, these “people” should jump off the page and feel familiar. I would hope you’d want to be friends with them. I would hope that they populate your dreams long after you turn the last page.

I can tell you that they populate mine.

Sometimes when I wake up after a dream about them or am thinking about an event in the novel I’m writing, it takes me a minute to remember that it’s not real life! When I type those very last words and complete the story, I miss them.

For as strange as it may seem, I live with these people for a long time. Once the writing is done, it leaves a true void. I know. I’m more than a little bit crazy…

I’m giving myself a little time off, but I already have reams of research done for my next project, a historical saga about Stonehenge.

It’s not just about the one-thousand-year construction plan that left behind one of the most mysterious and magnificent stone structures on earth. It’s about the people who built it, primarily the women.

I’ve created a utopia where women oversee everything – their culture’s governing body, their families, the placement of the stones and the true purpose of the circle.

It’s the anti “Handmaid’s Tale,” a book that left an indelible impression on me when I first read it years ago. In my story, a council of women make the laws, dole out the punishments, keep order and decide who does which job based on merit. Some women have children, others do not. The overarching narrative describes a world with no war, no true strife – because when women are in charge, everything is better.

I hope you’ll find it interesting, and I will post some excerpts from this novel as soon as I feel they are ready to be shared!

******************************************************************

As I mentioned above, I’m taking a little time off.

One of my favorite leisure time activities has always been going to the movies. This past weekend, after a long drought of post-Covid avoidance of theaters, my husband and I went to see “Twisters.”

It’s a remake of one of my favorite movies, “Twister,” with Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton playing storm chasers who are in love with one another, but don’t get along all that well! (Great set-up!)

The new version can’t claim as strong a screenplay – I thought the plot was weak. But those special effects? OMG! You truly felt as though you were going to be swept into the eye of the storm. I LOVED IT!!! I give it a ten-popcorn bucket rating… treat yourself and go see it!

I also was determined to give audio books another shot as another way to rest my mind (and my eyes.) Up until this point, I’d been unsuccessful in listening to one. I was never able to focus and I’d lose my place in the narrative. I thought that perhaps I was one of the members of the minority of readers who would never find listening to a book more compelling than reading one.

However, I chose to listen to something I’d already read – Joyce Maynard’s “The Bird Hotel.” As you know if you’ve read some of my previous newsletters, I’ll be attending Joyce’s intensive writer’s workshop in Guatemala next March and I knew that the setting for that seminar is a hotel Joyce owns herself. I also knew that she wrote this book during Covid while at her hotel at Lake Atitlan, so I expected that the story would reflect her time there.

Listening to Joyce read this novel herself was magical. I was drawn in and felt as if I was there, meeting the characters, tasting the food, swimming in the lake. It was mesmerizing and now I’m hooked.

Do you listen to audio books?
Send me your suggestion for what I should listen to next!