VAMPIRE MASTER...HAVE YOU PREORDERED YOUR COPY?

DECEMBER 15!! I promised you a December release for Wolf and Ella's story, and it looks like everything is cooperating! Happily, it's a standalone, so if you want to read it, but haven't read the other fifteen books in the Vampire Queen series, you won't be lost. But be warned - it may make you want to read the other two "Club Atlantis" Vampire Queen books, Vampire Mistress and Vampire Trinity. Yep, Wolf and Ella's story takes place at Club Atlantis, which we first visited for the two-part story of our beloved M/F/m trio, Daegan, Anwyn and Gideon.

So, the initial manuscript is written and I've started the first edit round. I can't believe I ever thought this would be a novella, because Wolf and Ella have had so much story to tell. Want to hear what the book's about?

BLURB...Big and bad enough to be any girl’s nightmare—or her best dream ever…

Beyond your grasp. Those are the three words that come to mind, every time Ella sees Wolf at Club Atlantis. He earns the term Master, in and out of scene, yet there is something deeper and darker about him. She wants to dive into that abyss.

Wolf sees the yearning. But the submissive he ultimately claims will become his servant, soul-bound to him for all eternity. Ella is a natural submissive, with an endless desire to please. She’s perfect for the role, really. Except Ella is a gift he doesn’t deserve.

However, vampires are wired one way—to take what they want, no matter what their conscience tells them. Even Wolf isn’t strong enough to resist his nature…or the salvation Ella’s love offers.

PRE-ORDER LINKS are live at all the vendor sites, but you can find them in one place here, at the book page on my website.

CHAPTER ONE PEEK! You can find that at the book page as well, but for convenience, you can also click the BookFunnel link here, to download it to your preferred ebook device.

PREQUEL VIGNETTE Don't forget, I wrote a short prequel about these two prior to the release of Vampire's Embrace (it was actually kind of a fun way to promo Vampire Embrace AND give you another glimpse of Wolf and Ella). This prequel is also available for download through BookFunnel here, or at the Cantrips (Vignettes) page on my website.

Stay tuned for more teasers and promotional events related to the December 15 release of Wolf and Ella's story!

NEW AUDIO BOOKS COMING

We've finished the contract paperwork on an audio version of Controlled Response and Honor Bound, Books 2 and 3 of the Knights of the Board Room series, so if all goes well, I'm told it will be about 2-3 months from contract signing to audio-version release. Hooray! Lucas/Cass and Peter/Dana will soon join the rest of the characters in having their books available at Audible. These stories, as well as the rest of the Knights of the Board Room books, will be offered through the Audible Escape program, if you participate in that.

I did approach the other major audio book provider out there (Tantor) about the Vampire Queen series, and they, like Audible, are not interested at this time in offering our vampires in audio. Ah, well. If my current marketing strategies are successful, maybe we'll get more nibbles in the future. Or I'll be able to set enough aside to produce the audio versions myself. We'll see!

NOW IT'S EVEN EASIER TO READ MY FREE CONTENT

Many of you know I have a whole library of novellas and short stories revisiting my series characters. However, when you go to the Cantrip (Vignettes) page on my website, you'll notice now there is a BookFunnel link for each story. BookFunnel provides a much easier download experience for people wanting to put content on their ebook readers. So if you have had problems doing the straight Kindle or Epub downloads with the vignettes, click on the BookFunnel link under your preferred vignette and see if that works better for you!

MY FAVORITE LOVE STORY, THIRTY YEARS IN THE MAKING

My husband and I recently celebrated our thirtieth wedding anniversary. It's hard to believe it's been that long, because every day I wake up and see the twenty-four-year-old shy guy with the heart-winning smile. He proposed to me ten weeks after we met, when I was nineteen, and I have no regrets to this day. In fact, he's a big part of why I love to write love stories. Click here to read my latest GoodReads blog post, which discusses how our relationship directs and inspires my work.

THE VAMPIRE QUEEN SERIES HAS A NEW LOOK

Last month I mentioned I'm working with a publicist to reach new readers. Part of those efforts involved a rebranding of my covers for the Knights of the Board Room series, which I revealed last month. Now it's the Vampire Queen series. I unveiled them on my Author Page and the JWH Members Only site on Facebook the weekend of September 21-22, but you can view them all on my website under the series page. We kept the spirit of the original covers, with the exception of Vampire's Claim and Elusive Hero, which received entirely new covers. Hope you like them! The response to the rebrand on both series has been positive so far. We'll be doing a marketing relaunch of the VQ series in the coming weeks, in anticipation of the release of Vampire Master in December, so you'll likely see some buzz happening on the Internet about the books. If you're a reviewer, vlogger or blogger, and would like to be in on all the activities and fun, please contact me at storywitch@storywitch.com so I can give you the contact info for the publicist. She'll keep you tied in on what all is happening.

SO WHAT'S NEXT?

What will I write after Vampire Master? Wow, that's the question, isn't it? I'm still deep in the edit rounds, so it's a glimmer in the distance, but usually about this time I am giving it some thought. It's been awhile since I wrote a contemporary, so I'm leaning toward another Nature of Desire book, maybe Rory and Daralyn. James and Ellen is also a story I'd like to write, but the muse hasn't decided if their story will be more of a contemporary (Ellen comes from the Nature of Desire series, introduced in Rough Canvas and reappearing as Athena's secretary in Unrestrained) or paranormal (James is the security chief at Club Atlantis). It's a given that the book will have elements of both, so it will be hard to classify. Interestingly, at this point there are more paranormal secondary characters waiting for their stories than contemporary ones, and my last three books have been paranormals (even The Problem with Witches, which had a Knights of the Board Room tie-in, was still primarily paranormal). So we'll see. The Muse is on the fence at the moment.

I will admit, one story that keeps coming to mind involves Catriona, from the Fae world (Lord Keldwyn's ward from Bound by the Vampire Queen) and the son of Elisa and Malachi (Vampire Instinct).Though it's never been revealed formally in the books themselves, Mal and Elisa had twins, a boy and a girl. I've been considering their stories for awhile. I've even taken some notes and done a bit of outlining on them. It would be unusual for me to do two vampire books in a row, but if the Muse takes me in that direction, that's where I'll go. Since Catriona is staying at Club Atlantis under Anwyn's protection, it would be another "Club Atlantis" book, so that might figure well in the current promotional efforts for the series. Not that the Muse ever responds to marketing pressure, lol, but if for once a miracle happens and the two align, then that wouldn't be a bad thing.

So in short, the answer to the question is "I really have no idea what's next" (grin). I'll be cruising through my notes to see what grabs me. And for those who've asked me about it after reading The Problem with Witches, yes, Ramona and Silas from the Arcane Shot series are a strong possibility sometime in 2020-2021. For those who are wondering, they made a prominent appearance in The Problem with Witches, which increased reader interest in seeing the Arcane Shot series finally completed as intended, with Ramona's story as the third book in the trilogy. Hmm...so I will continue to mull. No matter what, as always, I'll look forward to wherever the Muse wants to take us together.

CONTACTING 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.

Thank you all so much for your support of my work!

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USUAL STUFF

DIDN'T GET A RESPONSE? It seems those darn online filters are becoming more and more aggressive. And don't get me started on the many ways Facebook plays tricks with my messages, lol. But 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 of the mediums I've mentioned - 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!

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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, we do have some things you can try that seem to have worked for folks:

FIRST - make sure the newsletter email is part of your contact list: "newsletter@storywitch.com."

SECOND - Check whatever filters you do have for spam and the like and see what methods are available to you to ensure an email like this gets through. My newsletters have a plethora of links in them to make it easy for you to find the things I'm talking about, but the flip side of that is it can get the newsletter tagged pretty quickly as spam.

THIRD - Contact me at newsletter@storywitch.com and ask to be unsubscribed. Once we confirm with you that has been done, rather than us sending you an invitation (which can bounce for the aforementioned reasons), we have you go in to the website newsletter link and subscribe yourself - here's the link to that. If it works, you'll get an automatic invitation to confirm, and then, fingers crossed, you should be set.

FOURTH - If none of this works or all of it is just too frustrating and you want to say "screw it!" (and I can hardly blame you, lol), then just make sure you've liked my FB page or are following me on Twitter. This is because 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! It's the same link monthly, so if you want, just put https://storywitch.com/newsletter/?latest as one of your Favorites. You can click on it anytime to see if an update has been posted. I try to post a new one every 30-45 days.