A New Collection of Faery Fantasies!

I’m honored to be a part of this new collection of novels about the fae! I hope you’ll check it out and discover some new favorite series.

A stunning collection of the first books in six fan-favorite series by bestselling, award-winning fantasy authors! Discover the many worlds of Faerie in these novels filled with adventure, love, and – of course – Fae Magic.

Amazon     Amazon UK

Barnes and Noble

Including…

The Unfinished Song (Book 1): Initiate by Tara Maya
Dindi can’t do anything right, maybe because she spends more time dancing with pixies than doing her chores. Her clan hopes to marry her off and settle her down, but she dreams of becoming a Tavaedi, one of the powerful warrior-dancers whose secret magics are revealed only to those who pass a mysterious Test during the Initiation ceremony. The problem? No-one in Dindi’s clan has ever passed the Test. Her grandmother died trying. But Dindi has a plan.
AN EXILED WARRIOR…
Kavio is the most powerful warrior-dancer in Faearth, but when he is exiled from the tribehold for a crime he didn’t commit, he decides to shed his old life. If roving cannibals and hexers don’t kill him first, this is his chance to escape the shadow of his father’s wars and his mother’s curse. But when he rescues a young Initiate girl, he finds himself drawn into as deadly a plot as any he left behind. He must decide whether to walk away or fight for her… assuming she would even accept the help of an exile.

The Changelings (War of the Fae Book 1) by Elle CaseyJayne Sparks, a potty-mouthed, rebellious seventeen-year-old and her best friend, shy and bookish Tony Green, have a pretty typical high school existence, until several seemingly unrelated incidents converge, causing a cascade of events that change their lives forever. Jayne and Tony, together with a group of runaway teens, are hijacked and sent into a forest, where nothing and no one are as they seem. Who will emerge triumphant? And what will they be when they do?

Fairy Metal Thunder (Songs of Magic, #1) by JL Bryan
A rock & roll fairy tale.
Jason Becker plays guitar in a small-town garage band called the Assorted Zebras, along with a few other kids from his school. Unfortunately, they have no fans, no gigs, and they’re going nowhere. Then Jason catches a goblin robbing his house, and he chases the little green thief to creepy old Mrs. Dullahan’s overgrown back yard, where he discovers that the miniature doors in her trees lead deep into the fairy world.
Jason returns with fairy instruments that transform the band’s sound into powerful, enchanting music. Soon, the Zebras are drawing huge crowds, but they discover their new gear is brimming with destructive magic they can’t control.
Their shortcut to success turns Jason and his friends into enemies of the treacherous Queen Mab, who wants to keep the fairy world secret from humans. She sends magical hunters to track them down, including one of the most dangerous horned creatures in Faerie…a small unicorn named Buttercake.

Feyland – The Dark Realm (Book 1) by Anthea Sharp
Faeries. Computer games. When realms collide, a hero from the wrong side of the tracks and the rich girl he’s afraid to love must risk everything to fight the treacherous fey.
What if a high-tech computer game was a gateway to the dangerous Realm of Faerie?
WHEN A GAME…
Feyland is the most immersive computer game ever designed, and Jennet Carter is the first to play the prototype. But she doesn’t suspect the virtual world is close enough to touch — or that she’ll be battling for her life against the Dark Queen of the faeries.
TURNS REAL…
Tam Linn is the perfect hero — in-game. Too bad the rest of his life is seriously flawed. The last thing he needs is rich-girl Jennet prying into his secrets, insisting he’s the only one who can help her.
WINNING IS EVERYTHING…
Together, Jennet and Tam enter the Dark Realm of Feyland, only to discover that the entire human world is in danger. Pushed to the limit of their abilities, they must defeat the Dark Queen… before it’s too late.

Faelorehn – Book One of the Otherworld Trilogy by Jenna Elizabeth JohnsonI never heard him come after me and even as I climbed the slope and stumbled onto our shaded back lawn, I didn’t look back. It was like the day the gnomes chased me all over again, but this time I was not escaping some horrible little creatures, I was fleeing from an incredibly good-looking guy who could very well understand me completely. I was either saving myself from that serial killer I always imagined lived down in the swamp, or I had finally gone over the deep end . . .
Meghan Elam has been strange her entire life: her eyes have this odd habit of changing color and she sees and hears things no one else does. When the visions and voices in her head start to get worse, she is convinced that her parents will want to drag her off to another psychiatrist. That is, until the mysterious Cade MacRoich shows up out of nowhere with an explanation of his own.
Cade brings her news of another realm where goblins and gnomes are the norm, a place where whispering spirits exist in the very earth, and a world where Meghan just might find the answers she has always sought.

Ever Shade (A Dark Faerie Tale #1) by Alexia Purdy
A dark twist on faeries. For Shade, a chance meeting with a powerful Teleen Faery warrior who wields electrical currents and blue fires along his skin, has her joining him on a treacherous mission for the good Seelie Faerie Court across the land of Faerie. Magic and malice abound and nothing is what it really seems to be.
The evil Unseelie Queen and her treacherous allies are around every corner as Shade makes her way across the breathtaking landscapes of the world of Faerie, which exists alongside the mundane human world. Shade discovers her own uncharted magic and meets some of the most powerful warriors in Faerie while battling evil dryads, conniving Teleen guards and challenges on her life with every step in a world where nothing can be taken for granted.

After you’ve finished reading, be sure to leave a review where you purchased it or on Goodreads/Shelfari to help other readers find Faery Worlds.

Ebook Formatter Uses My Book as Example

You’ve heard it before… the difference between an indie book which reads like a trad pubbed book and an indie book which reads like a vanity press heap of toad dung is all in how much effort you invest in doing the details.

The biggest priority is to have a good editor. I’ve found that having a team of Beta Readers as a follow-up is even better.

The next most important thing is to have a gorgeous cover which clearly communicates your book’s genre and subgenre.

Finally, there is the issue of internal formatting. I admit, I gave no thought to this for the first couple of years. I couldn’t afford to hire help, and I wasn’t able to do it myself.

However, as eReaders have proliferated, screen quality has increased, and the tablet market has exploded, internally attractive books–with features like hyperlinked Tables of Contents–have become more important.

My formatting is now done by “Tech Guy.” (He charges $50 an hour, if you’re in need of a formatter.) He now has a blog, Unclogged, for those among you who are suitably nerdy. 🙂 This dude has every eReader ever built, I swear, even those weird cheap brands that are so cheap, you’ve not only never heard of the brand, you’ve never even heard of the country where the brand is made. He recently posted about how to take screenshots of eReaders, and he used The Unfinished Song: Initiate, as his example. Check it out.

What is Amazon Author Rank?

You may have noticed that Amazon is Beta Testing a new form of ranking, which ranks the author, rather than the individual book. The logic, I presume, is that individual books may be relatively unimpressive in ranking, but if the author has many of them, the author is still selling well overall. At least, I think that the reasoning.

Here’s what Amazon has to say about it:

What is Amazon Author Rank?

Amazon Author Rank is based on sales of all your books relative to the sales of other authors. Amazon Author Rank shows how an author’s books sell relative to other authors. Like the Billboard charts, lower numbers are better. An author with the Amazon Author Rank of #1 in Mystery & Thrillers is the bestselling author in Mystery & Thrillers on Amazon. Amazon author rank is updated hourly.

What’s Included in Amazon Author Rank?

It’s the same approach we use with the book bestseller list we’ve had for many years – we look at paid sales of all of an author’s books on Amazon.com. It includes books in Kindle, physical and audio formats.

Where will Amazon Author Rank be seen on Amazon.com?

An Amazon Author Rank will only appear for authors in the top 100 overall or in the top 100 in a browse category. Amazon Author Rank will appear on book detail pages in the More About the Author widget, on an author’s Author Page and, on the Amazon Author Rank page.

Reading an Amazon Author Rank in Author Central

In Author Central, you’ll see your Amazon Author Rank over time. The chart will show multiple blue points and an orange point. The blue points show your best author rank of the day, recorded around midnight, Pacific time. They show only that one point in time, and don’t represent an average of your Amazon Author Rank throughout the day, but your best rank during the day. The orange point is a snapshot of your Amazon Author Rank right now. It’s taken at the beginning of the current hour, and is updated throughout the day.

My current rank in Science Fiction and Fantasy is about #2000-#2500. Alas, not good enough to show up on any page….

Self-published Ebooks 20% of UK Genre Sales

How terrible that we have a larger choice of reading material than ever before in human history!

The UK market is a year or two behind the US market in the shift to digital reading, though they are the second highest in the world, and UK ebook sales spiked 134% in 2012 to total £216 million. The impact of indie authors can be seen there too. Now, according to Bowker Market Research, an astonishing 20% of all genre sales go to indies:

Self-published books accounted for more than 20% of crime, science fiction, romance and humour ebooks sold in the UK in 2012, according to newly released statistics. The figures, from Bowker Market Research, show that while self-published books made up a tiny proportion – 2% – of all books purchased last year, this figure increases dramatically, to 12%, when print books are removed from the equation. When just adult fiction and non-fiction ebooks are looked at, self-publishing’s share increases to 14% of the market, and in the crime, science fiction, romance and humour genres, self-publishing took more than 20%, according to Steve Bohme, UK research director at Bowker, which tracks book-purchasing trends by interviewing over 3,000 book-buyers a month. Only 3% of children’s ebooks, by contrast, were self-published.

Of course, the obligatory Ritual Insulter of Indie Books, speaking for traditional publishers, in this case, Andrew Franklin, rushed to assure everyone that this in no way changes the fact that self-published books are “unutterable rubbish” that “don’t enhance anything in the world.”

But Franklin, we knew that already. ANYTHING women like to read is considered rubbish:

Bohme said that price was the reason most cited by readers for the purchase of self-published ebooks. By contrast, price was only the third most important reason for choosing to buy other ebooks, and books as a whole, behind “author” and “subject”. And Bohme revealed that women are more likely to buy self-published ebooks than men, with 68% of buyers of DIY ebooks female – more than the 58% of female readers buying books as a whole. Those who bought self-published ebooks were also more likely to be heavy readers, with the statistics from Bowker showing that 61% of buyers of self-published ebooks said they read daily, compared to 37% of buyers of books as a whole.

Franklin also added, as a warning to any would-be indie author, that, “the principle experience of self-publishing is one of disappointment.”

Aw. That’s touching. I’m sure those 2% indie authors snagging 20% of genre sales are weeping all the way to the bank.

Special Spice: Alliteration

A guest post by Rayne Hall

Several words close together starting with the same sound can either empower your writing or spoil it, so use this technique with thought.

Here are some examples of skilfully applied alliterations from famous books:

…the foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks…. (Moby-Dick by Herman Melville)

… the baked red ruts of the road…. (The Beaver Road by Dave Duncan)

A sliver of soft sunlight pierced a crack in the silk drapes (Panic by Jeff Abbot)

… tokens of the mitred, martyred St Thomas (Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin)

….the all-over tan, the tailored teeth… (How to Kill Your Husband and other Handy Household Hints by Kathy Lette)

Fires were a common occurrence, leaving more and more buildings blackened and boarded, and discarded drug paraphernalia clogged garbage-filled gutters. (Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich)

Alliteration is an effective technique for creating impact. If you want to emphasise a sentence, perhaps for an emotional revelation or a shocking twist, or make the reader remember a certain phrase, try alliteration to make the section poignant and punchy.

The English language is perhaps the best language in the world for alliterations. The earliest literature in the English language used a lot of alliterations (e.g. Beowulf).

Alliterations are highly effective for audiobooks, performances and reading aloud. It also works superbly in humour, in poetry, for public speeches, for slogans, headlines and titles.

Next time you’re stuck for a title for a story, play with alliterations. Examples: Pride and Prejudice, Famous Five, Sense and Sensibility, The Pickwick Papers, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The War of the Worlds, Nicholas Nickleby, The Wind in the Willows, Of Mice and Men.

In poetry, you can use a different alliteration for every line. Alternatively, you can use a different alliteration for every couplet (two lines) or stanza (paragraph), or you can use the same alliteration for the whole poem. Another option is to sprinkle pairs of alliterate words throughout the poem. A famous poem using frequent but subtle alliterations is The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe: http://www.heise.de/ix/raven/Literature/Lore/TheRaven.html

In prose, it’s best to use alliteration sparingly, no more than four words in a sentence, and not in every sentence. It often works well in setting descriptions, but not in dialogue.

Caution: strings of alliterations can be silly. This may be the effect you want if you write humour, but for most kinds of prose it’s better to use alliterations sparingly.

Some sounds have psychological effects on the reader/listener. ‘W’ is good for powerful nature and wild weather. ‘B’ is good for blunt bold aggression. ‘D’ is good for sadness and defeat. ‘J’/’Ch’ is good for jolly cheerful moods. ‘Sn’ can serve to hint at sneaky, untrustworthy people. ‘Tr’ suggests traps and troubles. ‘R’ creates urgency and speed and is perfect for fast-paced scenes. ‘S’ can create spooky effects, useful in ghost stories. ‘P’ hints at authority, force, masculinity or pompousness. ‘L’ suggests sensuality, laziness or leisure. Consider choosing alliterative sounds for their psychological effects.

How much alliteration you use is one of the aspects of your voice. You may like to use a lot, very little or none at all. Treat alliteration as a special spice: a pinch adds flavour, but too much spoils the meal.

About Rayne Hall

Rayne Hall has published more than forty books under different pen names with different publishers in different genres, mostly fantasy, horror and non-fiction. Recent books include Storm Dancer (dark epic fantasy novel), 13 British Horror Stories, Six Scary Tales Vol 1, 2, 3, 4 (creepy horror stories), Six Historical Tales (short stories), Six Quirky Tales (humorous fantasy stories), Writing Fight Scenes, The World-Loss Diet, Writing About Villains, Writing About Magic and Writing Scary Scenes (instructions for authors).

She holds a college degree in publishing management and a masters degree in creative writing. Currently, she edits the Ten Tales series of multi-author short story anthologies: Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires, Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts, Scared: Ten Tales of Horror, Cutlass: Ten Tales of Pirates, Beltane: Ten Tales of Witchcraft, Spells: Ten Tales of Magic, Undead: Ten Tales of Zombies and more.

Rayne has lived in Germany, China, Mongolia and Nepal and has now settled in a small dilapidated town of former Victorian grandeur on the south coast of England.

The Day My Son Discovered Death

I have three sons, who are six (almost seven), four (almost five) and three. Their usual conversations involve stories about dinosaurs and potty jokes. Yesterday, however, they startled me.

The boys were fighting–hardly unusual–but when I went to break it up,  my middle son turned to me and said, “Mommy, I wish you’d never had [Youngest Son]. You did a bad thing, Mommy! Because now [Oldest Son] loves him and hates me!”

I cuddled him and the other two boys crept near to hear what I would say. I was a little angry, I admit, because I knew exactly what had precipitated this outburst.

I said to my oldest son, “Do you see how upset your brother is? This is because of the comments you’ve been making lately, saying one of your brothers is great and the other is a bad guy. That’s not nice to either of your brothers. It turns them against each other, and that’s not fair to them. Imagine how you would feel if someone else said those things about you.”

I repeated some of his comments verbatim, but with his name, concluding, “How would you feel about that?”

He started crying.

Then I turned to my middle child and said, “Your younger brother loves. And you love him. Why would you let someone else destroy that? All of you are brothers. You all love each other. You’re all on the same team.”

Youngest brother was oblivious to the drama and enthusiastically threw himself on middle brother to give him a hug. Or maybe it was a tackle. Anyway, there were hugs all around, and the crises passed.

It was not forgotten, however.

That night, after the younger ones had fallen asleep, my oldest one started sobbing in his bed. I heard and went to check on him. He said his thoughts had made him sad.

“What thoughts?” I asked.

“I can’t remember the games I used to play before [Youngest Son] was born,” he said. “What if in the future I forget all the games I know now too? What about in the future when I stop living here and I don’t have a Mommy and Daddy anymore? And what about when everything goes away?”

Ah, I thought sadly. He’s discovered death.

Of course, the children already knew that if you are hit by a car, you will “die.” But they also know that zombies and sword-wielding pirate skeletons are “dead,” so it’s all kind of relative to them. My oldest, though, he figured out this year that there’s no Santa Clause or Easter Bunny, “It’s just parents.” He figured out, “Magic is isn’t real.”

And that includes not coming back as a zombie after death. Not coming back at all. Going away.

And he’s discovered, too, that death, the great going-away, is not just a one-time thing that happens to the body, but the slow robbery committed by time of everything familiar, even your self.

He hugged me and said, “I don’t want to stop being six years old. I don’t want to stop being me. I don’t want you to die. I don’t want you to leave me.”

Many times, a parent can comfort a child by saying, “What you fear is not real. You don’t have to worry. I will protect you.”

But sometimes, all a parent can say is, “I know. I’m sorry. I’ll always love you.”

“Even after you die?” he asked.

“Yes,” I promised, “Even then.”