"Each and Every Word is About the Characters..."

"What I love best about Hill's books is each and every word is about the characters; how they grow, how they hurt, how they laugh and cry and wake up and realize life is an experience they don't want to miss!"

A delightful reader named Katie sent me that recently, after she read Unrestrained. Throughout the years of doing this, getting to know the characters has always been one of my favorite parts of the writing process. Does the muse still surprise me? Absolutely. I may know certain things about a character when I start his or her story, but we find out the deepest parts of who they are as they fall in love, overcome relationship obstacles, and react to the day-to-day challenges of their lives.

While my books are pretty emotional and sometimes dark, I also appreciate a character with a dry sense of humor. In life, I think humor helps us persevere with the soul intact, even if gets a little dinged up. In fiction, it provides a vital balance against the more difficult moments of the story. When I lose my sense of humor, it makes it harder to keep going, whether it relates to living my life OR reading a book, lol.

As I've been writing In His Arms, Rory and Daralyn's story, some of that humor has already come out. While learning about being in a Dom/sub relationship together, they attend a private party at Tyler and Marguerite's house. The snippet below is an exchange between Tyler and Rory.

Tyler and Marguerite are sentimental favorites from my Nature of Desire series. Their story was Ice Queen/Mirror of My Soul (it took two books to tell). Rory and Daralyn will be the newest book in the series, coming out in late summer/early fall.

As this snippet shows, I also LOVE to have characters from past books show up in current ones. Marcus and Thomas of Rough Canvas, as well as Des and Julie of Worth the Wait, will also have key roles in Rory and Daralyn's journey together. You can click here and read the blurb for In His Arms, as well as the first chapter. There's a BookFunnel link for convenient download onto your preferred device.

HOW ABOUT ANOTHER GIVEAWAY?

It's March, and even if you're still experiencing cold, frosty weather, we can't help but think of spring, right? The Canadian geese in our neighborhood are doing a lot of parading around, showing off for potential mates. All while the mockingbirds are perching on trees, singing their feisty hearts out, and the daffodils are showing early bright colors. Since I live at the coast, this is making me look ahead to our beach weather.

Just as we did for the Knights of the Board Room series, we recently rebranded the Nature of Desire covers so they'd have somewhat of a homogenous color scheme. So, to celebrate that AND the coming of spring weather, how about this Natural Law beach towel with the new blue cover?

TO ENTER: Just send me an email at storywitch@storywitch.com and tell me you want the beach towel. I'll choose the winner in the next newsletter. Can't get easier than that, right? My thanks to my wonderful admins, who sent me that great beach bag when I moved back to the coast. Not only does it accompany me on my outings to write by the surf, it made a great prop to show off the towel (grin).

NOTE: Same as with the fleece blanket we gave away last issue, the towel comes from Snapfish. I don't sell these because Snapfish is structured for personal purchases, not commercial sales. However, if you want something like a blanket or towel with a favorite book cover on it, just keep an eye on their site. They run frequent, really good sales and the products are decent quality (not awesome, but they are novelty items, after all ;>). When the item you want qualifies, all you have to do is set up your favorite book cover in the template.

THE MISTRESSES OF THE BOARD ROOM

While working on In His Arms, I am also working on At Her Command, the first book in the new spin-off series, Mistresses of the Board Room. This series is set in the same world as the Knights of the Board Room. In previous newsletters, I introduced you to Rosalinda Thomas, the heroine of At Her Command, and Lawrence, her hero, who has made appearances in Unrestrained and Willing Sacrifice. Would you like to meet the other four ladies of Ros's executive team? Here are the teasers I offered on FB this month. These are the models I'll be using for the cover creation.

Abigail's hero will be Neil, Lawrence's best friend (and another SEAL who makes an appearance in Unrestrained and Willing Sacrifice.) Be warned - Abigail also has the tear-jerker story of the group, which makes her determined not to commit to anyone long term. But Neil has other ideas - and you know I firmly believe in Happily-Ever-Afters!

Cynbad is our sadist of the group - she and Ben would be fast (and scary) friends. She drives a big black pickup with a gunrack, and prefers to wear black slacks and black tank tops during her sessions. She's the badass of the group.

Skye is going to be an interesting challenge - a Mistress who is also mute. I can't wait to write a session between her and her chosen submissive where she communicates primarily with non-verbal cues.

I had to do this graphic a little differently, because the cover image I'll be using for Vera didn't have her face, but this hair/makeup site pic was a perfect match for how imagined her. That "headless" cover image was very appropriate, because so far, Vera has revealed the least about herself to me during the writing of Ros's story. But usually that just means she's going to end up being one of the most interesting to my readers before it's all over. (That was my experience with Ben O'Callahan in Knights of the Board Room.)

Hope you've enjoyed this quick introduction to the Mistresses! Look for Ros's story in June 2020. Remember, you can go here on my website to download your Chapter One teaser of At Her Command and learn more about Ros's book. We should have the preorder up in April.

AUDIO BOOKS - KBR NOW ON AUDIBLE ESCAPE

As many of you know, Controlled Response and Honor Bound, Books 2 and 3 of the Knights of the Board Room series, came out on Audible recently. When that happened, I reported the series would be offered through the Audible Escape program. There was a glitch where that had not happened. However, thanks to the persistent efforts of my current Audible contact, that has been corrected. Books 1-7 are now available ON AUDIBLE ESCAPE! My apologies for the original confusion. Click on either of the titles above to go directly to the Audible listing for that book. Click here for the KBR series, and here for all my Audible titles. Nineteen of my books are currently available in audio format!

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

In addition to the SASS conference I'm attending in Norfolk July 9-12, I'll also be at Frolicon, which happens in Atlanta, GA, April 30-May 3. Have you signed up for either one or both? I'd love to see you! Frolicon is a celebration of alternative lifestyles and sexuality, but includes an "Ink Track" for those interested in writing BDSM stories. SASS is an author-reader conference with a big Saturday signing event. Look at the amazing author line-up!

Since Frolicon is a bit less clear cut than an author-reader event, here's their official conference statement:

Frolicon is the unique juxtaposition of the geek and kink worlds celebrated in glorious fashion in the heart of downtown Atlanta. Each Spring we celebrate our unique sense of fun and frivolity with 2000 of our closest friends. What’s your poison? We’ve got it all. Kink. Gaming. Burlesque. Music. Costuming. Parties. Lots and lots of parties.

At Frolicon we pride ourselves on providing a safe and comfortable place where you can be you. With tracks of programming with focuses on LGBTQIA, erotica and sci-fi/fantasy authors, photography, dance, polyamory, psychology, and so much more, we are positive that you’ll find your happy place and maybe discover a few new ones. See you in the Spring!

This will be my first year attending Frolicon, so I'll let you know more details as I have them. Hope you'll be able to join me for at least one of those events!

CONTACTING/FOLLOWING ME

Remember, you can find me online through my website email contact link (little envelope under Follow Me on the right side of home page) or email me directly at storywitch@storywitch.com. You can also leave a question for me under my Author Profile on GoodReads. I'm on Facebook under Joey W. Hill, and you can visit the JWHMembersOnly FB fan forum group here. I'm @JoeyWHill on Twitter, and my Pinterest boards related to the books are here.

I'd also love it if you followed me on Bookbub, Amazon or both, since that helps my books get increased visibility and recommendations on the site. And in return, you get heads up about releases and sales!

• BookBub
• Amazon

DIDN'T GET A RESPONSE? Responding to my readers, and doing so in a very timely manner (within 24-48 hours), is extremely important to me. So if you have sent a communication to me in any medium - direct email, FB, GoodReads or Twitter - and have not received a response, a technical glitch has occurred. Either your communication did not get through to me, or my response did not reach you. If you suspect that's the case, use one of the alternative communication methods to send me a "Hey, Joey, I sent you a note through email (or FB, or a tweet, etc). Did you get it?" message, and we'll make sure we sort it out. I will never intentionally ignore my readers!

Thank you so much for your support of my work!

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NEWSLETTER NOTES

While you can subscribe to the newsletter through my website, you may find your email host isn't letting it through, thanks to broad spam-blocking mechanisms that don't separate communications you've specifically requested to receive, from those you haven't. Regrettably, there's not a lot we can do on this side if the newsletter is hitting an email filter that is bouncing it without notifying either one of us.

However, if you think this is happening to you, and you've checked your allowed lists and done everything you can think of to get the email through, here are a couple other options:

Like my FB page or follow me on Twitter. Whenever I issue a newsletter, I will post the updated link to it on both of those, to make sure it reaches the widest number of people possible. Or...

Put https://storywitch.com/newsletter/?latest as one of your Favorite links. You can click on it anytime to see if a new newsletter has been released. I try to get a new issue out during the first 7 days of every month.

If you ever get an error message with the link above, simply go to storywitch.com, hover over the "More" menu item and click on the Current Newsletter. But after that, check that your Malware is up to date and ON, scanning for potential gremlins. That's usually how they hijack you and take you to spam sites. Trust me, I know. When it happened to me, my husband fussed and pointed out I had not updated the Malware in ages, OR turned it on for daily scans! Bad, bad right-brain author...