21

Today, my little sister turns 21.  I could very well make this a sentimental post about how she’s my best friend in the world and how she’s crossing a major milestone and how I’m so thankful to have her in my life, and all of that would be very, very true.  I don’t know where I’d be without her.

In honor of her birthday, I decided to release my new book, Backstage, the sequel to Boy Band, a day early on Kindle.  I did this, in part, because she loves the first book so much.  We’re both big boy band fans in real life, and she was the one who really pushed me to finish the first book and to publish it.  She enjoyed Cemetery Tours also, but not like Boy Band.

That being said, I hope you all enjoy the second book!  I did my best not to end it on as BIG a cliffhanger as the first one, but rest assured there is a third one in the works!  Sam and Mel’s story isn’t quite finished yet!

Love you all!

Backstage on Kindle

 

December Tidings

Hello, friends!

Oh my goodness, it feels like it’s been a while since I last posted.  Probably because it has been.  This has been quite a week though, let me tell you!

First of all, I hope all my American friends had a splendid Thanksgiving full of good food and good times spent with family and friends.  My Thanksgiving was pretty excellent, although as soon as I got home from our friends’ house, my throat began to hurt and I spent the next three days on the couch with The Crud that’s going around.  Thanks, Dad.  Fortunately, I didn’t get it nearly as bad as he did.

In much more exciting news, IT IS FINALLY DECEMBER!  It’s time for snowflakes and hot chocolate and Christmas lights and movie nights by the fire and all those wonderful winter things!  Now of course, once Christmas is over, I won’t be nearly as excited about the cold, but for the next 25 days, bring on the winter chill!

Even though it’s only the first day of December, it’s already turning out to be an incredibly busy month.  I’m giving a talk tonight at a local library about NaNoWriMo and what to do after you’ve finished your manuscript.  If I can figure out how to post the Power Point presentation here, I will.

I’m also giving another talk at another library NEXT week, but I need to check in and make sure everything is still on schedule for that!

Also… BACKSTAGE WILL BE AVAILABLE IN EXACTLY ONE WEEK!  I’m so excited for y’all to read it.  I would post the first chapter here, but it contains MAJOR spoilers for the first book, so I’m afraid y’all are just going to have to wait a week!  You can, however, enter to win a signed copy of BOTH BOOKS on GoodReads.

Once Backstage is released, I’m going to take some time just to enjoy the holidays, spend time with family and friends.  But I’m also going to be investigating a few new publishing platforms as well as a few new projects.  Oh, and I’m also going to be catching up on a LOT of reading.  My goodness, I am so behind.

Happy December, everyone!  It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

(Except for, you know, when it’s warm and sunny).

 

Backstage Soundtrack

With a little less than a month until Backstage is released, I figure it’s about time to share the soundtrack that helped inspire it!  Every time I come up with a new idea for a book, one of the first things I do is make a playlist of music to listen to that serves as a soundtrack that I listen to while the book plays out in my head.

You can find the Soundtrack to Boy Band here.

Note: I do not own any of these songs, nor am I profiting from them in any way.

1. “Shut Up and Dance” by Walk the Moon
2. “Little White Lies” by One Direction
3. “Roller Coaster” by Bleachers
4. “Ordinary Day” by Vanessa Carlton
5. “Something Great” by One Direction
6. “Good Girls” by 5 Seconds of Summer
7. “The Great Escape” by Boys Like Girls
8. “Don’t” by Ed Sheeran
9. “Manhattan From the Sky” by Kate Voegele
10. “Drag Me Down” by One Direction
11. “Headphones” by Matt Nathanson
12. “Disconnected” by 5 Seconds of Summer
13. “Perfect” by One Direction

Backstage will be available on December 8!  Make sure to enter my GoodReads Giveaway for a chance to win signed copies of BOTH Backstage and Boy Band!

GIVEAWAY!

Title and Cover Reveal

Hi, friends!  You’ve all been asking, and I finally have an answer!

BACKSTAGE, the sequel to BOY BAND, will be released on December 8, 2015!!!

This is two title/cover reveals in the past month, I know, but I’m so, so, so excited about both of these books!  I can’t wait to share them with you!

Please don’t forget to enter my #BecomeACharacter Raffle!  It’s so easy!  All you have to do is like my Facebook page and follow me on Twitter!  Read more about it here: https://jackiesmith114.wordpress.com/2015/06/15/becomeacharacter/

Love to all!

Monday Musings

Hi, friends!  I hope you all had a great weekend.  Mine was very relaxing, yet still somehow kind of productive.  I say “kind of” because I never feel like I’m as productive as I want to be/need to be/could be.  But you know, for a couple of days where I’m housesitting two houses, taking care of two cats with medical needs, and writing two books, three different short stories, and designing book covers, it could have been a lot worse.  OF course, just because I feel like I kind of did stuff over the weekend doesn’t mean I can take a break or even slow down.  There is always something that can be done.

For example…

1) Reading and reviewing.  I have several books on my to-read list, and several of those I hope to review as they are written by fellow indie authors.  I finally got to review Heir to the Sun by Jennifer Allis Provost yesterday: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1290975139?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

2) Tidying up.  I am a slob, okay?  Total and complete slob.  I like to think that when I own my future beach house, I’ll keep it nice, but to be totally honest, I probably won’t.  Still, as much as I hate cleaning, I usually do feel a lot better afterward.  So who knows?  Maybe I’ll take the plunge.

3) Designing book covers.  I’m not sure if I’ve told y’all this, but I am redesigning the Cemetery Tours series’ book covers.  I plan on re-releasing the first two with the new covers at the same time as After Death on October 6.  I’ve been playing around with design ideas and having a lot of fun with it.  For those wondering why, I still absolutely love the covers as they are now.  They’re beautiful and captivating and people really like them.  But they aren’t my images.  The photographs on the covers of those books are stock photos.  I’d really like to make the books fully my own, and that means using my own images.  As the release date draws closer, I’ll be sharing the image designs and ideas to get your opinion.  The ones I’m leaning toward right now are actually really pretty, but they still need a bit of work.

4) Working on short stories, not only for submission into anthologies, but for Boy Band!  I feel bad for leaving the story on such a cliffhanger, and to apologize for making my readers wait until December to find out what happens, I’ll be publishing a few free short stories here on my blog until December rolls around!  No spoilers at all.  They’re most stories of what took place before the first book.  Just for fun.

5) Preparing for my sister’s and my trip to California NEXT WEEK!  What?! How did that sneak up on us so quickly?!  I’m not at all ready!  But at the same time… I am SO ready!

What does your Monday have in store?

More Pictures

Hi, friends. This week has turned out to be a lot busier than I expected it to be. That’s a good thing! But it also means I don’t have as much time to spend here online with all my awesome friends and fellow bloggers.

First of all, I’ve been housesitting. Let me tell you, it is hard work.

I also finally got the first shipment of Between Worlds in. That meant taking a day trip up to Denison to deliver books to the Book Rack! It also meant sending a copy off to the Library of Congress.

It’s only been out for a week and a half, but Between Worlds has been getting a lot of positive feedback. I couldn’t be more thrilled. To be honest, I was a little scared that people wouldn’t like it as much as the first one. I’m so excited that people really seem to be enjoying it!

Also, I have a lot of new sunflowers, but I’ve been running around town all day and frankly, I’m exhausted. I will definitely be posting again soon! I miss blogging. And drawing. And painting. And reading.

Talk to you all soon!

One Week!

Hi, friends!

Oh my goodness, everything is happening all at once.  Today, we have exactly one week until Between Worlds, the sequel to Cemetery Tours, is released!  I’ve also been busy working with some amazing film and theater students who have offered up their time and talent to film a BOOK TRAILER for Cemetery Tours!  Today was the first day of filming, and oh my gosh, I had so much fun.  They are all so fun and professional.  I can’t wait to see the final cut!

Since there is only one week to go until Between Worlds is released, I thought I’d share the first two chapters with you as sort of a preview.  I hope you enjoy it!

PS: These chapters DO include MAJOR SPOILERS for the first book, so proceed with caution.

Between Worlds Chapters 1 & 2

 

Quotes

My brain is tired after being out in the sun all day, so it’s not doing a very good job of coming up with a decent blog post.   I thought, however, I could at least share a few new quotes from BETWEEN WORLDS.

Available July 1.

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/41439188-between-worlds-cemetery-tours-2

Enjoy!

30 Days!

Okay, people of the cyber world, it is June 1.  That means the one month countdown to BETWEEN WORLDS is officially on!

In honor of the impending release, CEMETERY TOURS is on sale from now to July 1 for only $2.99 on Nook and Kindle.  Once July 1 hits, it will go back to $4.95, so get it while it’s on sale!

Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cemetery-tours-jacqueline-e-smith/1117000854?ean=9780989673402

Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Cemetery-Tours-Jacqueline-Smith-ebook/dp/B00F7CHQ08/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401672575&sr=8-1&keywords=cemetery+tours

Before Cemetery Tours release, I tried to do some kind of fun promotional thing at least once a week.  Today, I thought I’d give you a few Anti-Spoilers/Bits of Trivia about Between Worlds.

1) I have had the idea in my head for this book longer than Cemetery Tours.  I pretty much wrote Cemetery Tours so I could write this one.

2) It is set in a fictional mansion in Maine.  This mansion was inspired by too many childhood viewings of Casper.

3) Brink plays a bigger role in this book than in the first.  He actually wasn’t intended to be in the book that much.  In fact, he was just going to have a few scenes in the beginning of the book.  But as it turned out, he is everyone’s favorite character, so he ended up being promoted to one of the main characters.  The best thing about Brink being everyone’s favorite, I realize, is that no one ever has to worry about me killing him off.  He’s already dead.

4) I was afraid that this book wouldn’t be as spooky as Cemetery Tours, but there were a few scenes that, when I wrote them, I actually spooked myself.  I’m hoping that readers find them spooky too.

5) In this book, we meet the rest of the Cemetery Tours team: Gail Marsh, J.T. Sawyer, and Peter Jamison.

I can’t think of anything else that won’t reveal too many plot points, so that’s all you’re getting for now.  I will, in the weeks following, be releasing the first two chapters for download (if I remember how that is!), as well as a soundtrack list and ideal casting.  Stay tuned!  And please, check out Cemetery Tours and, if you enjoy it, leave me a review!

If you don’t like it, please don’t review it.  😉

Speaking of reviews, I found out today that you can review your own books on GoodReads.  I decided to leave Cemetery Tours a nice, modest little review.

 

The Between Worlds Cover is Here!

So excited to finally be able to share the cover of BETWEEN WORLDS with all of you!

You can find Between Worlds on GoodReads here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22095545-between-worlds