A Hauntingly Beautiful Cover

So I've just seen the draft of the cover for my upcoming YA release, Dare to Dream and it is truly stunning. The cover is fierce, beautiful and haunting and perfectly compliments the story.

Seeing the cover has got me crazy excited as I've been working on Dare to Dream for a long time and it won't be long now until I get to share Maggie's epic story with everyone.

The cover will be revealed soon. In the meantime if you want to get a feeling for the book you should check out the song Flares from The Script's new album as in my opinion, it is the perfect song for the story and once you've read it you'll hopefully know why!

Covers are so important in today's increasingly competitive book market. I personally am a bit of a magpie and admit to being drawn to a sumptuous, intriguing cover. If the blurb is strong I'm then hooked! I will also buy books based on the strength of recommendations from book blogging friends but a great cover definitely helps.

Dare to Dream is being released through Reuts and like my other publishers, Carina, they have a history of creating wonderful book covers. And if you love the cover as much as I do you'll be able to hold it and swoon over it first hand as excitingly Dare to Dream will be available as both an e-book and a paperback.

2015 is already looking set to be one crazily busy, awesome year! But first I want to relax and enjoy Christmas and thanks to my recent viewing of The Hobbit Battle of the Five Armies I'm now desperate to break out my LOTR box set and sit through all the magic of the first movies again as I utterly adore them!

I hope that whatever you're doing over the festive period you have a truly magical time!

Happy Holidays!

xoxo

My Avalon series continues...

Currently the second book in my Avalon series, Second to Cry, is on offer for £0.99 and excitingly the next installment in the series, Third to Die, will soon be released as the book is now available for pre-order on Amazon and will be out on 10th January next year!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Third-Die-Carys-Jones-ebook/dp/B00QH0JBRU/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1417536172&sr=1-1&keywords=third+to+die

So if you're getting a shiny new Kindle for Christmas you'll be able to load it up with the whole series so far!

And ahead of Third to Die's release I can share it's brand new cover below;

Some secrets are better left buried as once learned they can never be unknown

I love the bright pop of colour on the cover and of course Aiden, standing as always alone contemplating his next move...

I am beyond excited to share this book with everyone as I personally feel that it charts Aiden's greatest adventure in Avalon so far! So pre-order and have something to look forward to in the new year when Christmas lights have faded and everything seems so gloomy. I promise that the book will be the perfect post Christmas pick me-up!

So what does Third to Die have in store for Aiden? The title contains a clue...

xoxo

Most Wonderful Time of the Year

So today is 1st December! Woo! My advent calendar has been opened and I'm already crossing my fingers in the hope of a white Christmas!

This is by far my favorite time of the year. I love seeing everywhere lit up with sparkling festive lights. As the days grow colder there is something lovely about being able to come home and sit by the fire in front of a gorgeously decorated tree!

Speaking of which, I will be putting my tree up this week and I can't wait. I just hope Rollo can resist the urge to chew all the decorations on the lower branches like he did last year! : /

I'll be dusting off my Michael Buble Christmas album and playing it non-stop on a loop until the big day itself! I've also got Christmas cakes that are suitably stewed in brandy that need icing. I find icing to be the trickiest part but I've roped in assistance this year in the form of my Mum, though that is kind of the blind leading the blind but hey ho!

Hope everyone is as excited for the festive season as I am!

xoxo

Phew!

So today marks the end of my #NaNoWriMo campaign and I'm delighted to say that I won! I successfully wrote a whole novel (50,000 words) in 21 days. And I am beat!

As I shove my mouth full of my jelly baby reward and await the inevitable sugar crash I'm able to momentarily bask in completing my next novel. Normally it takes me 3 months to write a book so it's good to know that if I push myself that extra bit I can trim that time down to three weeks. But it is tough. I've been writing consecutively every day breaking targets of 4 and 5K. It has been extremely draining at times but I had my goal in mind, I knew where my story needed to go I just had to get it there.

I am now looking forward to a blissful weekend of doing not very much. Whilst #NaNovWriMo was fun I think  in future I'll stick to my 3 month turnaround times as there is far less pressure that way.

When people learn I'm a writer they often say how much they'd like to write a book of their own. My advice to those people is take advantage of #NaNovWriMo. Everyone involved in #NaNovWriMo is crazy supportive and it's that kind of encouragement which will really help you out on the days when you are struggling to write. And I can certify that it is more than humanly possible to write 50K in one month. I completed my own story whilst working full time as a freelance writer. Balance is important, so is planning. I personally find planning to be absolutely essential!

Good luck to everyone hitting the home straight with their own WIPs! I hope you all manage to cross through that finish line! I'm off to send my newly completed novel to my agent, fingers crossed she likes it!

I'm so relieved to just be finished that I'm even considering sharing my big box of jelly babies! Any takers?

xoxo

Hitting the Half Way Point

So we are ten days in to November and I've passed the 50% mark on my WIP. I'm currently at 28,031 words so am looking set to complete the novel before #NaNoWriMo concludes.

I've heard from other participants that this is often the point where they hit a wall. I can honestly say that mentally I'm pretty drained. I've been writing solidly every day but not just on my WIP but also my freelance work. I'd normally give myself a few day's off, at least over the weekend, but in order to complete the 50K within the month I really need to work everyday.

On a positive note, as tired as I may be I'm in no danger of hitting a wall. I've actually got the rest of my entire story planned out in finite detail so just need to press on and finish it now. But I am...tired. When you write you pour yourself out in to your words. You sit at your desk and just bleed and of course that level of engagement takes its toll. To those who know me I'm a bit of a zombie at the moment. When I do emerge from my Disney themed study, blinking and bleary eyed I tend to just want food (anything sugary) and some quality time with my favorite TV shows.

I am losing track of the days. I'm working late in to the night and falling asleep in the afternoons. Yet it will all be worth because my story will be complete. And then what will December have in store? Edits mainly for my upcoming releases. It really does never stop but I'm living my dream and wouldn't have it any other way!

How is everyone else's #NaNoWriMo shaping up? Hope you are all hanging in there! I tell myself to just keep writing, just keep writing, sung to the tune of Dory's 'just keep swimming' in Finding Nemo!

xoxo

NaNoWriMo

I'd heard of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) before but have never actually participated. Usually my freelance commitments mean that cracking a whole novel out in one month isn't all that achievable.

The aim of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words of your WIP in just one month. Personally, I work quite well under pressure because I enjoy making myself suffer. Since I work from home it is important to always motivate myself and I guess I see NaNoWriMo as I way of doing that. So this year I'm tossing my hat in the ring (is that even the right saying??) and I'm giving it a go.

Everything is all planned out including my story and daily word counts to hit. I'm going to be working on a YA sci-fi adventure which I've had lurking around in the nether regions of my mind for almost three years now so its high time the story, The Other You, gets to see the light of day and have some life breathed in to it.

Will I make the 50,000 target by the end of November? It depends on a lot of things really, most of all myself. I'm going to be writing a story I'm crazy excited about which will help. I also plan on bribing myself to hit daily targets with my favorite sweet treats; jelly babies (Bassetts of course). The only bump in the road might come from my freelance commitments. I'm currently writing the second part of a 60K trilogy and a 25K sweet romance novella. Since I'm contractually obligated to complete those, they sadly might take priority over my own WIP if I start to struggle.

But I'm full of naive optimism having never done NaNoWriMo before that I will hit 50K, and failing that I'll have made a decent dent in a story I've been dying to write for years!

So wish me luck! After I've eaten my weight in sweets on Halloween I'll be settling down for the next four weeks to write as much as I possibly can!

If you want to follow my progress I'll be doing updates on Twitter; @tiny_dancer85 and also via my Facebook page; https://www.facebook.com/CarysJonesWriter

http://nanowrimo.org/participants/carysj/novels/the-other-you

If anyone else is signing up for NaNoWriMo give me a shout and we can motivate each other! But no, I'm not willing to share my jelly babies before you even ask...

xoxo

Dare to Dream

What would you do if you thought the world was going to end? Like, literally? Would you try and save it? But you're only 14, stuck in a British comprehensive school and living with five siblings who daily push you to the brink of despair. These are the issues facing Maggie Trafford in my upcoming book, Dare to Dream.

I've mentioned before that I've been signed up with indie publishers Reuts. I'm really excited to be working with them and I'm currently in the midst of edits with my lovely editor Eleanor. We are hopeful that Dare to Dream will be ready to be released in to the world early next year although we won't have an exact release date until all the edits are wrapped up. And then comes the exciting part of cover reveals and release day giveaways!

I'm thrilled to have a YA book coming out soon! It is definitely the genre I most love to read! Maggie's story is also pretty personal to me as the book is set all around my home county of Shropshire. I hope everyone is as excited to read her story as I am to share it. I think we've all been there at fourteen feeling like the weight of the world is on our shoulders. Maggie truly believes that the world will soon end thanks to an onslaught of nightmares from which she can't escape. But the world can't really end, can it?

To find out, make sure you add Dare to Dream to your TBR list and keep an eye out for details around the release date!

 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23337621-dare-to-dream?from_search=true