New Release: Krysten Lindsay Hager and In Over Her Head

I’m so pleased to welcome Krysten Lindsay Hager to Creative Hodgepodge today. Krysten has made a name for herself as a prolific author of young adult novels, and today she’s celebrating the release of her newest release, the second in her Cecily Taylor Series.

In Over Her Head: Lights, Camera, Anxiety (The Cecily Taylor Series) by Krysten Lindsay Hager

Young Adult Romantic Comedy from Clean Reads

Blurb: Cecily wants a big life, but can she handle it?

Cecily feels like she has it all: great best friends, the beginnings of a career as a model/actress, and she’s dating her favorite singer, Andrew Holiday. Then Cecily’s best friend Lila begins to ditch her every time Lila’s boyfriend calls. Cecily feels lost, but she and Andrew begin connecting more and she’s never been in a relationship where she felt so understood. Andrew even begins to confide in her about his anxiety. Soon Cecily experiences her own anxiety on a magazine photo shoot, but she manages to impress the magazine staff. Just when it seems like all her dreams are coming true, everything comes crashing down when a photo of Andrew with another girl appears online. He swears nothing happened, but Cecily is crushed. She feels like she’s lost two of the people closest to her.

Was her perfect relationship real or was she in over her head?

Excerpt:

 One day I had the career and the guy of my dreams. Then Danielle King came along. If people could be trusted, maybe it would have been okay, but they can’t. They suck. And now my dream relationship was gone and no one would ever know what had actually been in my grasp.

How can a person go from having a whole life with someone, and then it ends like you were never even together? No wonder people talk about how awful divorces are. That must hurt a million times more. Sure, I don’t have to see Andrew every day at school like I did Zach, but it seems like Andrew was everywhere. I went to the grocery store with my mom and they were playing one of his songs because he’s technically a local.

 Andrew’s music was always what I listened to when I was sad. His heartache music got me through the worst times and now, not only could I not stand to listen to it, there was now the chance I could end up hearing music about our breakup. Actually, I didn’t know which was worse: the possibility he’d use our relationship as inspiration for a song, or finding out I was barely a blip on his radar and not even warranting a mention. 

What was I supposed to do now?

Purchase:

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VRYS65N/

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07VRYS65N

Amazon Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07VRYS65N

Amazon Japan: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B07VRYS65N

Amazon IN: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B07VRYS65N

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Krysten+Lindsay+Hager

Book Depository: https://bit.ly/2ZuKQun

IndieBound: https://bit.ly/2Yt5t4S

Walmart: https://bit.ly/30QsSPu

Book One of this series is available at: https://www.amazon.com/Dreams-Come-True-Cecily-Taylor-ebook/dp/B079S3KJSH

Author Bio: Krysten Lindsay Hager writes about friendship, self-esteem, fitting in, frenemies, crushes, fame, first loves, and values. She is the author of True Colors, Best Friends...Forever?, Next Door to a Star,  Landry in Like, Competing with the Star, Dating the It Guy, and Can Dreams Come True. Krysten's work has been featured in USA Today, The Flint Journal, the Grand Haven Tribune, the Beavercreek Current, the Bellbrook Times, Springfield News-Sun, Grand Blanc View, Dayton Daily News and on Living Dayton. 

Author links:

Website: http://www.krystenlindsay.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/krystenlindsay/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KrystenLindsayHagerAuthor

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/krystenlindsay/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KrystenLindsay

New Release: Landry in Like by Krysten Lindsay Hager

I’m happy to host fellow Clean Reads author Krysten Lindsay Hager, who has a brand new addition to her impressive young adult series. The Landry's True Colors books are full of humor, yet they teach about friendship, self-esteem, fitting in, middle school and high school, frenemies, crushes, and self-image. Landry in Like is the most recent release.

​Blurb:

Things seem to be going well in Landry Albright’s world—she’s getting invited to be on local talk shows to talk about her modeling career, her best friends have her back, and her boyfriend Vladi has becoming someone she can truly count on…and then everything changes. Suddenly it seems like most of the girls in school are into hanging out at a new teen dance club, while Landry just wants to spend her weekends playing video games and baking cupcakes at sleepovers. Then, Yasmin McCarty, the most popular girl in school, starts to come between Landry’s friendship with Ashanti. Things take a turn when Yasmin tells Vladi that Landry is interested in another boy. Can Landry get her relationships with Ashanti and Vladi back or will she be left out and left behind?  

Excerpt:

I wanted to call my friends and tell them about being on the talk show, but Mom said we had to be at the TV station super early — even before school started. She said I could text them, but I had to turn off my phone and go to bed.

“I’m waking you up at four a.m.,” she said. “You have to be there at five-thirty.”

“Can I just call Peyton and Ashanti? Please?”

“Fine, but you have five minutes and then that phone is mine and you’re in bed.”

I dialed Peyton, but her mom said she was in the shower. I told her mom about the show tomorrow and said my mom wouldn’t let me stay up any later to call Peyton back.

“How exciting! I will make sure Peyton knows, and I will be watching you tomorrow. Good luck, honey,” Mrs. Urich said.

I called Ashanti next and told her.

“Get out. Get. Out. No way. This is so exciting!”

“I’m so nervous. My stomach is already doing cartwheels. I can’t do one, but my stomach can. Seems unfair. What if I throw up before I go on? I did that right before I went on at the statewide Ingénue modeling competition in Detroit, and my mom had to give me a cough drop to cover up the smell.”

 “I’m sure you’ll be fine, but… just in case, take a cough drop with you,” Ashanti said. “Good luck. You’ll be great and I’ll go set the DVR now.”

 I hung up and sent a text to Vladi, India, Devon, Thalia, Tori, and Ericka, so no one would be mad and feel left out. Then I shut off my phone. Mom poked her head in the door to make sure I was in bed.

“Night, hon. Try to get some rest,” she said.

Easier said than done. I stared at my ceiling while thinking about all the things that could possibly go wrong tomorrow. Seeing as the show was on in the morning, I never got to watch it, so I had no idea what the set was like — did it have super high chairs and I’d struggle to get into them? And what if it had those higher stools that were kind of tippy and my rear overshot the seat and I fell off? Or what if the prep questions got lost and the interviewer asked me random things like my feelings on nuclear war or asked me about some foreign political leader who I had never heard of before, and I appeared stupid? Why did I say I’d do this? I tried to get comfortable and it felt like I had just dozed off when I felt my mom shaking my shoulder.

“Rise and shine, TV star,” she said.

Book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CsGREKFQco&feature=youtu.be

Landry in Like is available at Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes and Noble, Nook UK, Kobo, iTunes, and other ebook retailers.

Author bio: Krysten Lindsay Hager is the author of the Landry’s True Colors Series, a clean reads young adult series and the new ​Star Series. Krysten writes about  friendship, self-esteem, fitting in, middle school and high school, frenemies, modeling, crushes, values, and self-image in True Colors, Best Friends…Forever? And Landry in Like, as well as in, Next Door to a Star (Star Series). Her sequel to Next Door to a Star will be out March 22 2016.

Krysten is a book addict who has never met a bookstore she didn’t like. She’s worked as a journalist and writes YA, MG, humor essays, and adult fiction. She is originally from Michigan and has lived in Portugal, South Dakota, and currently resides in southwestern Ohio where you can find her reading and writing when she’s not catching up on her favorite shows. She received her master’s degree from the University of Michigan-Flint.

Find Krysten at her website and on Instagram, Amazon, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

Tara Mayoros: Turning Manuscript Pages Into Art

I consider myself fairly crafty, but I don’t pretend to be an artist. Give me something to copy and I can usually do pretty well, but to paint something from scratch, well, that’s best left to others. But Tara Mayoros, one of my fellow Clean Reads authors recently showed how she turned some of her old manuscript pages into beautiful works of art! She sometimes gives them away at author events, but this lovely painting here is displayed in her home.

I asked Tara for permission to re-blog, but since Blogger doesn’t have that option I copied some pictures from her original post. This lovely tree graces her mantle. Isn’t it gorgeous? If you want to know how she did it, click on the picture to go to Tara’s blog. She's got detailed instructions there.

Here are some more beautiful projects Tara has made from her manuscript pages:

I’m sure you’ll agree that Tara is as talented at art as she is at writing! Her novel Broken Smiles was released at Clean Reads last year.

About Tara’s book Broken Smiles:

One fateful night while performing at the Grammys, the pressure from the music industry becomes too much for Laidan. She is quickly carried off the stage, leaving the world audience stunned and amazed by her emotional performance. Accompanying her are a trusted bodyguard and a close childhood friend. Together they make for the jungles of China where she meets Doctor Rafe Watkins, a humanitarian who has reasons of his own for why he has chosen to live deep within the bamboo forests.

The handsome doctor is building an orphanage and runs a clinic that fixes children’s broken smiles or cleft palets. Watching him perform his many acts of kind service, Laidan’s “broken smile” is also healing and she begins to fall deeply in love with him. She has finally found a place where she belongs. One problem – because of Rafe’s intentional seclusion from society for the past seven years, he does not know Laidan’s true identity. What will he do when he finds out? Can love conquer all, or is Laidan’s rock star fame too big for his quiet life?

Broken Smiles is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, and other ebook retailers.

Tara can be found on Facebook, her blog, Twitter, Pinterest, Google +, and Instagram.

About Tara Mayoros:

As a child, Tara Mayoros moved to Asia with her family where her love of different cultures and travel began. In college she satisfied her wanderlust by moving to back to China, filling her head with countless stories, and occasionally writing them down. Years, marriage, children, and many adventures later, she picked up her dusty pen and paper and realized that writing took her to different worlds and gave her the experiences that she yearned for. As an artist, musician, and nature lover, she sees the beauty in the process, and the miracle, of creation. The mountains are her home and they call to her whenever she finds herself in need of inspiration.

Heather Gray: Marketing on a Skinny, Tiny, Little, Shoestring Budget

Marketing on a Skinny, Tiny, Little, Shoestring Budget

by Heather Gray

Selling a kazillion books.

Happy sigh.  Isn't that what most authors dream about as they slave over that first novel?  By the time novel number two comes along, it's a determined sigh.  With novel number three, it's a gritty sigh.  With novel number four, there's not even a sigh anymore.  Reality has set in.

If writing is fun and editing is work, then what is marketing?  Hard work – painfully hard.  At least, that's what I used to think.

I've known authors who have spent over a thousand marketing dollars to launch their debut novel only to wait six months before earning a paycheck with more than two digits to the left of the decimal.  I've also known authors who have spent little on marketing and who have seen their books take off like wildfire.

Personally, I'm not very good at spending big.  It's part of that whole being-an-adult and putting-my-family-first thing.  I know, I know.  It might sound crazy to some people, but I'm not willing to starve my family's budget in order to feed my writing career.

I'm also not a big gambler, so you won't find me buying tickets and sitting around anxiously waiting for my number to be called in the book-success-lottery.

Work hard with integrity and consistency.  You could say that's my motto when it comes to my writing.  When it comes to marketing?  Work smart, not hard.

I keep a marketing calendar, and I plan my marketing in advance.  Because I'm organized, I end up spending less than an hour each month scheduling all my marketing for the following month.  I also plan my marketing all together in a single 5-7 day time period.  While I pay attention to marketing during that time, I'm not anxious about it because I've already done the work.  The biggest perk to this system as far as I'm concerned is that I get to concentrate on writing for most of each month.  Didn't I say it above?  Writing is fun.   It's important to writers – and to their careers – to make time for writing.

I also incorporate several free promotional sites into my monthly marketing plan.  Some free sites offer fantastic results.  Others – eh.  But even those sites that provide so-so-mediocre sales results still offer links to your book and often to your website on their site and in their social media promotions.  Those links back to you (called backlinks) and your book help increase your chance of discoverability.  In the world of search engine algorithms, having other sites linking to your webpage is an awesome thing.  Those backlinks might not result in immediate sales, but they do feed into your long-term success.

Here are some of the free sites that I use for book promotion (always double-check as prices are subject to change at any time, etc.):

http://awesomegang.com/submit-your-book/

http://bookpraiser.com/submit-book/

http://pretty-hot.com/submit-your-book/

http://readingdeals.com/submit-ebook

http://www.bargainbooksy.com/for-authors/

http://www.bookhippo.uk

There are a lot of other book promotion sites out there that don't charge.  Sometimes it's because they're new and are still trying to build their following, and sometimes it's because they make all their money from affiliate links with the booksellers.  Just remember, some will pay off with immediate sales, and some won't.  A balanced approach between your short and long-term goals is always a good idea.

By the way – if your budget allows it, and you want to use paid sites, too, go for it!

Whether using paid or free sites, though, keep track.  Know where you've advertised and what the results have been.  Having that knowledge will make planning next month's marketing that much easier.  Seriously.  Plan ahead so you can spend your time writing, not stressing out about marketing.  After all, if you don't make time to write, you won't have anything to market.

****

Thanks, Heather! 

You will love her historical romances. Here's the blurb from her book Queen:

You can't hide from the past.

Queen's world was shattered, and she was banished to a foreign land. Years pass before she dares to return, but what she finds is of little comfort. Greed and dishonesty have festered and grown in her absence. Embittered and cynical, Queen trusts few people.

Owen pursues a clandestine investigation and finds himself working side-by-side with a veritable ghost, an agent few have seen, a master of disguise known simply as Queen. He craves her trust…but then uncovers a secret from his family's past that could destroy her.

Queen once sought refuge in America and now seeks it in disguise. Owen has always found his refuge in God, but will his faith be strong enough for the challenges ahead? Can he convince her to stop hiding, or is he doomed to become her most hated enemy?

Heather Gray can be found at her website, blog, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Queen can be purchased at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, and other ebook outlets.