A cover reveal & a sneaky announcement
Also... pulling out of KU (again)
TW: pet loss and grief
Hey y’all. So apparently I missed a newsletter. We said goodbye to one of our bunnies the week before the last newsletter was supposed to go out, so it slipped my mind. There was a week between finding out at an emergency vet that he had fast-moving, widespread cancer and making the decision to say goodbye humanely, and I just wanted an escape. I took that week off from writing to read.
What I read
Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause (reread; one of my all-time favorites)
Hate That Blooms by Izzy Ravas
Golden by S.B. Hazel
Baby Proposal by Evie Rose
Complicated Hearts duet by Ashley Jade
Hush Little Baby by Ashley Michele
It Was Only a Kiss by Ashley Michele
Of course, with a looming deadline, I couldn’t take much more time off, so straight back to writing Southern Discomfort I went.
I’m very happy to report that a full draft has finally been finished, and after receiving feedback from critique partners, I’m in the first round of edits before tossing it at the editor.
Who woulda thunk, having a deadline has been good for me. So much so that I’ve decided to have another release this year for spooky season 👀
While I’m planning on having this ready for September or October, my brain is on its bullshit and already making this story a hell of a lot deeper than I wanted it to be 🙄 So we’ll see if it’s this spooky season or not. Stay tuned.
The Tales of the Scorned feminine rage anthology cover reveal
Speaking of the anthology – last time I shared the full author list, and now I get to share the cover reveal for all four volumes!
If you’re interested in being an ARC reader for the anthology, ARCs are handled by Luna Literary and you can apply here.
Interested in ARC reading only Southern Discomfort? Respond to this newsletter or leave a comment and I might offer my own ARCs if there’s enough interest.
My books are no longer in Kindle Unlimited
If you’ve been with me since 2023, you already know I’ve been out of Kindle Unlimited and published widely for quite a while. I decided to throw my books back into it earlier this year on what felt like a whim but was really a result of mulling it over for months.
Despite the fact I thought about it for a while, I found myself immediately regretting it. The platform I use to run my shop announced a partnership with Bookfunnel just a couple of days after I made the switch; then a major pirating website resurfaced and made me remember, oh shit, I have to pay attention to pirating again in case Amazon terminates my account; then the latest round of Amazon stripping page reads from KU authors happened, and most of those authors are friends of mine in the same genre. All of it was enough to scare me right back out of the program immediately.
When you see an author call themselves “wide,” this means that their books are available outside of Amazon. Enrolling books in Kindle Unlimited requires exclusivity with Amazon, which means that ebook cannot be available elsewhere at the risk of losing your Amazon publishing account – which includes pirated copies that are obviously beyond an author's control. You think Amazon cares? All they want is that dough, so any excuse not to pay authors is a good one. You’ll see this isn’t the case for all authors, however; traditional publishers have contracts with Amazon which may allow their authors to have their ebooks available in KU as well as other platforms. Simply put: indie authors don’t have that kind of pull and are forced into exclusivity with Amazon.
I’d like to apologize for going back and forth on this. I know it’s irritating, not to mention confusing. For the sake of consistency, future Aurora Graves titles (barring Southern Discomfort as part of The Tales of the Scorned anthology) will not be in Kindle Unlimited.
Again, I’m sorry for being inconsistent and aim to be more consistent in the future.
Where you can find my books
My books will always be available in my official shop, both ebooks and paperbacks, plus any special editions (did you know the discreet hardcover is available only in my shop now?). In addition to paperbacks being signed, each paperback order comes with swag! Not to mention the printer I get them from has incredible quality. Sure as hell beats Amazon.
Borrow my books from:
Your local library (currently available on Libby and waiting for Hoopla to process)
Kobo Plus (which offers ebooks AND audio for $9.99/month!)
Buy my books from:
Amazon
Apple
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million
Smashwords
Walmart
and other retailers
A’ight, back to the editing cave. Stay fucked, abominations.
Oh no! So sorry to hear about your bunny :(
Scale one to ten the first book… how much a need is it to read? I’m typing with ADHD brain fog