Holly Blackstone

Just to keep you updated… Lulu has approved the book and sent it to Barnes & Noble and iBookstore so that it can go through their approval process. I am still waiting (albeit not very patiently!) for them to give it the green light. The moment the book is live, I will post links.

Thanks for stopping by and remember, I am also on Twitter: (at)HollyBlackstone .
All the best,

Holly

Hopefully this topic doesn’t sound too intimidating!

I get spam – a LOT of spam. I have a tool installed that tries to cull out spam comments but even so it only gets about a third of them and every few days I have close to 1000 junk comments I have to sort through – I still have a backlog from when I was finishing “Banish the Darkness” and didn’t check my site much!

So in order to comment you will need to register and log in to post; this should eliminate all the bot spam. I’m really sorry about the change and hope it doesn’t adversely affect anyone. If there is a problem or you have a concern, please feel free to email me at holly (at) hollyblackstone.com and we’ll chat about it.

Thanks! =)

Holly

One of my wonderful readers, Tanja, sent me an email with some questions about ‘Banish the Darkness’ and I thought you all might be interested in seeing my answers as well. So with her permission I’ve edited it and submit it below for your perusal. =)

It may contain some light spoilers or intimations of things that will happen so, FAIR WARNING! If you don’t want any hints of what’s to come you may not want to read.

That being said, here we go! =) I’ve labeled this as part one because she had some other smaller questions which I might include later in a separate post.

By the way, if you have any questions you’d like to see answers to, feel free to email me or add them as comments to this post!

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Tanja: He (Stuart) is growing really darker by the page and I can not help but feel he will loose it at some point…

Holly: So Stuart *is* getting darker; things are finally getting to him. Lily is so close to being his and he is absolutely determined to have her but the pressure of the job, getting stabbed, trying to juggle it all has made him a bit manic, possessive, intent on holding on to Lily no matter what.

We all have dark parts of ourselves that we keep at bay and as Stuart once said he isn

Book four has JUST been released to Lulu and Amazon. It will take a few hours for it to become live on Amazon, but it is available on Lulu here. When I have a live link on Amazon,

Happy Labour Day!

Book cover is done – editing is not. Have been packing my home to move – the owners *are* selling the house and I need to pack and get it tidied up so they can put it on the market and I was sick for several days last week – 101 fever, and that’s just starters.

Greeting, patient readers!

The first draft of book four is done, except for a few little things like acknowledgements, etc. (YAY!!!!)

Unfortunately, my computer is dead, however, and four days of work were nearly lost earlier this week when I had a hard drive failure on my machine. Luckily, I use an old computer to host my blog site and do weekly backups to it and as my drive started acting up, I was able to copy the book to my old computer with the current changes, and only lost a page. (I’ll try to spare you most of the gory geek details of this mess!)

I wrote a lot in the subsequent days and then I had my boot drive on the same machine – my ‘new’ computer – die last night. (The odds of this happening are astronomical, frankly). I had to finish things up on my old backup computer this morning. I’ve lost a lot of things I’m not sure I can get back… tens of thousands of personal and book related bookmarks and images for example (limited space means I only backed up certain things). I hope I can get them back, but am grateful that my books (especially this last one), are okay. =\ That’s something, anyway.

So there are a few reasons I haven’t posted about or released the book. Number one is because of these computer problems and the second is because the book is over 96,000 words and took longer to finish than my last post indicated. (I had estimated then that the book would be about 77,000). The count will change slightly as I go through the editing pass this weekend, but not significantly. When I thought about the book I decided I wanted to move some things around and add more detail to Lily & Stuart’s trip to Taos to see her mother. The cost of the book will remain the same however.

I’m really in the home stretch now – I’ll edit this weekend and finish the book cover and I’m shooting for Wednesday to release it to Lulu and Amazon. I’ll post links here as soon as I have them.

Thank you!

Holly

 

 

Readers! Have patience! I am about… 2000 words shy of finishing the first draft (At 74,000+ now)! This week it’s seemed as if the universe is conspiring to delay things but… I am very, very close! Liliana and Stuart are visiting with her mom – it’s an explosive and insightful trip.

Please have patience! 😎

Thank you!

Love,

Holly

Last week I promised an update. Here it is. =)

This past weekend wasn’t that productive because I got talked into going to the Seattle Erotic Art festival. I was a bit reluctant at first but overall I’m glad I went (although it meant that my planned 4 hour marathon writing sessions had to be nixed). Friday night a man who collects old 16mm films presented a selection of old short ‘Stag’ films, interspersed with old public service messages.

So July was less productive than I planned because of an unseen mini-calamity and a short road trip I took last week to see a good friend.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t been ‘working’ on the books. I took some photos this week for the cover, and now need to load them into Photoshop and doll them up.

I’ve also decided on a title for book four (and five!), and my readers who visit this site are the first to see it. Book four will be called “Banish the Darkness”, and book five will follow as “Step into the Light”. Book four looks to be a little longer than my previous books, and the series will wrap in book five, I’m sad to say. =( I’m working on an idea to publish a ‘Tales’ book that has short stories from Lily and Stuart’s past (before they met), as well as perhaps a mini-novel detailing their life after book five (an epilogue).

Right now I can’t think too much about finishing the series – I need to work on completing book four and wrapping up their story is just too difficult for me to contemplate, as I’m in love with them and their romance.

I have tried to do my best to minimise distractions for the next week – look for a more concrete ETA on book four by the beginning of next week!

Thank you so much for your patience; I’m sorry book four has taken longer to complete than I anticipated, and I appreciate your forbearance!

In the meantime, I would love to hear feedback on:

• Favourite scenes
• Who do you think is involved in the plot to sabotage Stuart?
• How do you think it will all end?
• Something you did NOT like… (For example – I know of several readers who say it was a little difficult to get into the third person/present tense writing initially. Were you one of them? Do you like it now?)
• One more thing! How did you find my books? Friend, browsing online…?

Warm regards, =)

Holly

Mere minutes ago, I took to Amazon and Lulu to reduce the price of “An Accidental Affair” from $4.99 to $3.99 for summer! If you were curious about the book, it’s incentive for you to give it a go; I know a lot of people are leery of starting a series and paying for a book when they’re not sure they will like it – hopefully this makes it a little easier to take the plunge!

I’m working on book four and appreciate the forbearance of my readers! I have a few more story ideas I’m thinking over and outlining, and have already started book two in the Sine Qua Non cycle as well. Hopefully this will be a productive few months for me and an enjoyable few months for my readers.

Thank you for coming back and checking in!

Warm regards,

Holly