Monday 25 November 2019

Heir to the Throne ~ read a free sample!

New Release!

An Epic High Fantasy


Subscribe to my mailing list to receive an extended preview
(approx. 30% of the 118,000-word novel)


Download full book from:

Only the worthy can take the Throne...

In the Kingdom of Adgar, the King or Queen's firstborn is not automatically named Heir to the throne; any of their children can become the next ruler of the land. If they are deemed worthy.

17-year-old Aaryana has competed against her siblings from a young age and is a firm favourite to take the Throne. However, just days before her father is expected to name her his Heir, a scheme is devised to not only take Aaryana out of the running, but also to ruin her reputation completely.

Will her enemies succeed in cheating her out of the throne that she was destined for or will Aaryana and her friends manage to save her from disgrace?




Heir to the Throne is a new epic high fantasy that’s perfect if you’re getting Game of Thrones withdrawal symptoms or missing the Throne of Glass series.







Monday 18 November 2019

HEIR TO THE THRONE

Upcoming Release!

An Epic High Fantasy


Subscribe to my mailing list to receive an extended preview
(approx. 30% of the 118,000-word novel)


Releasing February 2020

Pre-order full book from:

Only the worthy can take the Throne...

In the Kingdom of Adgar, the King or Queen's firstborn is not automatically named Heir to the throne; any of their children can become the next ruler of the land. If they are deemed worthy.

17-year-old Aaryana has competed against her siblings from a young age and is a firm favourite to take the Throne. However, just days before her father is expected to name her his Heir, a scheme is devised to not only take Aaryana out of the running, but also to ruin her reputation completely.

Will her enemies succeed in cheating her out of the throne that she was destined for or will Aaryana and her friends manage to save her from disgrace?




Heir to the Throne is a new epic high fantasy that’s perfect if you’re getting Game of Thrones withdrawal symptoms or missing the Throne of Glass series.







Tuesday 15 October 2019

Heir to the Throne - An Epic High Fantasy

Upcoming Release!

An Epic High Fantasy


Subscribe to my mailing list to receive an extended preview
(approx. 30% of the 118,000-word novel)


Releasing February 2020

Pre-order full book from:

Only the worthy can take the Throne...

In the Kingdom of Adgar, the King or Queen's firstborn is not automatically named Heir to the throne; any of their children can become the next ruler of the land. If they are deemed worthy.

17-year-old Aaryana has competed against her siblings from a young age and is a firm favourite to take the Throne. However, just days before her father is expected to name her his Heir, a scheme is devised to not only take Aaryana out of the running, but also to ruin her reputation completely.

Will her enemies succeed in cheating her out of the throne that she was destined for or will Aaryana and her friends manage to save her from disgrace?

Heir to the Throne is a new epic high fantasy that’s perfect if you’re getting Game of Thrones withdrawal symptoms or missing the Throne of Glass series.

From a Single Image to an Entire Trilogy

The Creation of My Upcoming Epic Fantasy Series

Heir to the Throne


Hello everyone, long time, no proper blogging! But the baby (well, he's a toddler now; he'll turn 2 in December) is napping, so I thought I'd write a quick 'story behind the story' post in relation to my upcoming novel, as I usually do when I introduce a new book/series to you. So, let's get into it :)


My next release is an epic high fantasy novel, coming out in February 2020. Its sequel will be out in March 2020. Both books are available for pre-order now at your favourite retailers. By signing up to my mailing list, you can read an extended preview of Heir to the Throne (sample comes in e-book format, and is approximately 30% of the full 118,000-word novel).


The cover and blurb for the first book are below, and then I'll talk about the inspiration behind it.


Only the worthy can take the Throne...

In the Kingdom of Adgar, the King or Queen's firstborn is not automatically named Heir to the throne; any of their children can become the next ruler.

If they are deemed worthy.

17-year-old Aaryana has competed against her siblings from a young age and is a firm favourite to take the Throne. However, just days before her father is expected to name her his Heir, a scheme is devised to not only take Aaryana out of the running, but also to ruin her reputation completely.

Will her enemies succeed in cheating her out of the throne that she was destined for or will Aaryana and her friends manage to save her from disgrace?

Heir to the Throne is a new epic high fantasy that’s perfect if you’re getting Game of Thrones withdrawal symptoms or missing the Throne of Glass series.

There were a number of factors that helped shape the premise and plot of this story. What put things into motion for me was the image of the girl in the Heir to the Throne book cover. I saw it on the Pixabay stock image site in March 2018 and fell in love with it. It was just a PNG of a girl with her sword and cloak, but I thought it was stunning and immediately downloaded it.



I really wanted her on a cover for one of my books, but she wasn’t appropriate for any of my contemporary romance novels, obviously, and as my fantasy books are in the urban fantasy sub-genre, she couldn’t go on the covers of my Poison Blood Series or Witch’s Blood Series, either.

“I’ll just have to write a book about her, then,” I thought to myself jokingly, but almost instantly, my brain came up with various ideas for how to go about it. Quickly, I asked and answered a bunch of questions—who and what is she? What does she do? Why is she holding a sword? Why is she dressed like that? Where and when exactly is she?—and built up a mini character profile for her in my head. I decided that she was a Princess, and came up with reasons as to why she was dressed for combat, rather than in a pretty gown. It was clear that she belonged in an alternative historical high fantasy-type setting, and the world-building began.



At the same time, I couldn’t help thinking about a story that my mum used to tell me when I was a kid, and I wondered if this Princess's story could be a retelling of that bedtime tale. Fairy tale retellings are in at the moment, aren't they?

“Once there was a very vain King,” my mum used to say. “And he would always ask his daughters how much they loved him and why. One day, when he asked his daughters this question and they started likening their love for him to sweet things—sugar, honey, syrup, molasses, and so on—one of the Princesses said that she loved him like she loved salt.” My mum always mentioned this daughter last—she used to say that this Princess was the King’s favourite child, too—so, I assumed that she was the youngest child. However, she could have had siblings that were younger than her; we just didn’t get around to hearing from them because the King threw a tantrum due to the salt comparison and banished her from the kingdom.

“She was taken in by a family in a faraway land,” mum would say, “and didn’t see her father until years later, when he visited the people that she lived with. The King didn’t know that the daughter he'd disowned years ago was a part of the household that had invited him for dinner, and the ex-Princess took the opportunity to teach her father a lesson. She cooked an inedible banquet using sweets like sugar, honey, syrup, etc. in the place of salt, and the only dish that the King was able to eat and enjoy was the last one brought to the table. It was the only one that used salt for seasoning and nothing sweet.

“He remembered the daughter that had loved him the way she loved salt and understood her point of view. The King told his hosts about the daughter that had obviously loved him just as much as his other children and openly regretted banishing her.” Which was the cue for the chef/Princess to reveal herself. Overjoyed, the King took her back with open arms.

As a child, I thought my mum had made up the story, or her mum had, or her mum’s mum. In my teens and young adult days, I came to the conclusion that it must be a classic bedtime story that Bangladeshi women have been telling their daughters for generations, to drill in the importance of seasoning our food: The amount of salt in a curry can make or break the dish.

It was only when I was contemplating doing a retelling of this bedtime story that I thought of Googling it. If I'm  going to tell people that my next book is inspired by a classic Bangladeshi folk tale, I thought, I should do a fact check, shouldn’t I?

What I found was that this story is typically referred to as “The King and his Daughters”, and various cultures around the world have their own renditions of it. I’m glad I did the research, but it’s not because I can now say that Heir to the Throne is a retelling of The King and his Daughters. Technically, it’s not a retelling, but I have taken inspiration from certain elements from the story I grew up with (a King with quite a few daughters, the favourite Princess wrongly getting punished) and the stock image helped me make a few other decisions.

Anyway, within the space of a couple of days, I had a mental outline for the book and started fleshing it out on the MS Word app on my iPhone whenever I had an hour here or a half-hour there in-between running around after my baby. I can’t remember when I actually started writing the book (maybe September 2018, or end of August?), but the bulk of the drafting took place in October and November 2018 (my first NaNoWriMo!).

Because I was working on a novel, I couldn’t read Tower of Dawn and Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J Maas (the last two books in the Throne of Glass series) until 2019, when the first draft of Heir to the Throne was done. I’d had the e-book of Tower of Dawn for a while but didn’t want to read it until the series finale was released on October 23, 2018. When it did come out, I was in the zone, writing my book, and I had to postpone reading those books back-to-back.




Now, some of you might be wondering, Why's she gone off on a tangent? Some of you Throne of Glass fans might be thinking that it’s about time that I mentioned my favourite high fantasy series. Clueless as to where I’m going with this? Let me explain. I’ve been wrongly accused of copying other authors’ stories enough times to feel that I have to say this: I read Tower of Dawn after finishing the first draft of Heir to the Throne. I didn’t copy one of the tiny elements in that book and put it in my own. It is possible that two writers can have similar ideas for their books.

And for you Throne of Glass fans, Heir to the Throne can be put into the same bucket as Throne of Glass because both of these series are set in alternate historical fantasy lands and revolve around Kings and Queens and Princes and Princesses—hence the cover of Heir to the Throne was designed to say, “Yes, you’re right, this cover is reminiscent of the Throne of Glass covers, and that’s because this book might provide a similar experience to the Throne of Glass series. So, if you liked those books, you might enjoy this book, too.” My series has a completely different story line, though, different characters, and is not a re-hash of Sarah J Maas’s brilliant work. You'll see that very quickly if you sign up and read the sample.




Right. With that out of the way, let’s get back to business. As I said earlier, Heir to the Throne is not a retelling of The King and his Daughters, and even if it had started off as that, the novel would have ended up as something else entirely. Most of the books I write change and evolve into something much bigger than I expect, and this book was no exception. I’m working on the series finale now and it is going to be EPIC. So, watch this space.




Subscribe to my mailing list to receive an extended preview
(approx. 30% of the 118,000-word novel)


Releasing February 2020

Pre-order full book from:




Thank you for reading this post. My books are available on Apple BooksB&NKoboSmashwords, and Amazon.

Friday 4 October 2019

Heir to the Throne

Upcoming Release!

An Epic High Fantasy


Subscribe to my mailing list to receive an extended preview
(approx. 30% of the 118,000-word novel)


Releasing February 2020

Pre-order full book from:

Only the worthy can take the Throne...

In the Kingdom of Adgar, the King or Queen's firstborn is not automatically named Heir to the throne; any of their children can become the next ruler of the land. If they are deemed worthy.

17-year-old Aaryana has competed against her siblings from a young age and is a firm favourite to take the Throne. However, just days before her father is expected to name her his Heir, a scheme is devised to not only take Aaryana out of the running, but also to ruin her reputation completely.

Will her enemies succeed in cheating her out of the throne that she was destined for or will Aaryana and her friends manage to save her from disgrace?

Heir to the Throne is a new epic high fantasy that’s perfect if you’re getting Game of Thrones withdrawal symptoms or missing the Throne of Glass series.

Saturday 13 July 2019

Soulmates Saga Sale, Book 1 #FREE for Limited Time

You might have noticed that the Soulmates Saga is on sale at the Smashwords store, and Book 1, Every Little Piece of You (previously published as Chasing Pavements) is free to download from all retailers that Smashwords distributes to, so don't miss out. Offer ends 31st July, 2019.

Every Little Piece of Us (Book 3)  ~ $2.99 only on Smashwords

Every Little Piece of Me (Book 2) ~ $2 only on Smashwords

Every Little Piece of You (Book 1) ~ FREE at:
Apple Books 
B&N Nook
Kobo
Smashwords 

Normal price of all three books is $3.99 each. Link to series at Smashwords here.


Book 1 Details
Length: 110,000 words
Genre: Contemporary Romance / Clean Romance / Diverse Romance / Interracial Romance / Romantic Drama / Women’s Fiction

Mood: Inspirational / Feel Good / Coming of Age / Dark
Content: Sexy but No explicit sex scenes / No erotica
Audience: New Adult & College / Adult / Female Readers

Recommended for: Readers that enjoy romance novels with serious issues and characters with depth. This is a story about life, love, friendship, family, music, art, destiny and soul mates.






Also, I never explained why I re-branded the Soulmates Saga, did I? So, I’ll take this opportunity to quickly go through my reasoning behind it.

First, the covers and titles before the change:







Basically, I’d been meaning to change the titles of the three books in this new adult romance series for a while, but I hadn’t found the time to focus on it. What made me consider a re-brand was something that a reader had said on Goodreads when she downloaded the first two books. Although she hadn’t been offensive in any way, her comment got me thinking: The fact that the titles of my three books are the titles of Adele hits might be seen as a gimmick by potential readers, that I’d used the titles of those hugely popular songs as a sly marketing tactic, click bait in a way. To draw readers into a series that perhaps had no substance to it. We don’t like to be tricked, and if we believe we’re being duped, we’re instantly negative about the product or service that we think is trying to rip us off, and we’ll keep well away. I didn’t want potential readers to disregard these books for this reason, because this series is much more than the initial titles I so naively assigned to them. (Check out the review snippets dotted around on this post if you don’t believe me).




The truth is that it took me so long to settle on a title for Book 1, which had started off as a stand-alone (and can be read as a stand-alone), that when I decided on Chasing Pavements, and it felt perfect, I was extremely relieved that I could finally publish it. It was my debut self-published novel and I really had no idea what book marketing entailed (book titles, covers, blurbs with key words--just to name a few--are all crucial to the process, and I didn’t know any of this back then! Lots of indie authors say the same thing: “We didn’t know what we were doing when we started this journey.”).




When it came to the sequel, and then the third book in the series, it felt natural to go with other Adele hits that fit the theme and mood of each novel (Make You Feel My Love and Someone Like You). There was actually a beloved BBC drama series named after a Bowie song (Life on Mars); when they made the second series, they went with a another Bowie song for its name. I thought it was cool, I thought I was being cool, too. I still, personally, like the idea of song titles as book titles, but I know what it might look like to others. (I’d love to use the following song titles for future books, but I won’t; I’ve learned my lesson: Somewhere Only We Know, When We Were Young, Driftwood, Never Let Me Go).

Funnily enough, the new titles for these books are actually song lyrics (well, the first two books are). The phrases, ‘Every Little Piece of You’ and ‘Every Little Piece of Me’ feature in a song called Linked, written by the male protagonist of this series, Jamie, who is a singer/songwriter. All three titles, coupled with the new covers, are romantic, though, and convey the feel of the books to potential readers, so I’m very happy with them. Do check out this series while it’s on sale (three books for under $5!) and post a review to let me know what you think.




Thanks for reading this post. The first two books in my teen urban fantasy/YA paranormal romance series, the Poison Blood series, can be downloaded for free via:

Amazon |  Apple Books US UK   |   B&N Nook Store   |   Smashwords





PB1 Book Details
Length: 29,000 words
GenreYA Paranormal Romance / Teen Vampire Romance / Young Adult Paranormal Fantasy / Teen & YA Urban Fantasy / Young Adult Science Fiction & Fantasy / Supernatural Romance / Fantasy Romance / Sparkling Vampires
Mood: Dark / Humorous / Coming of age
Content: No violence / No explicit sex scenes / No erotica
Audience: Teen / Young Adult / New Adult / Adult
Recommended for: Readers that love all things related to the Chosen One, vampires, slayers and witches!




Thursday 2 May 2019

Witch's Blood Series Q&A

Q: What was your main inspiration behind this series?

A: Short answer: Amber. She played a big role in my Poison Blood series, and turned into a great character. I thought she deserved a series of her own. For those of you that have read the Poison Blood Series, I hope you agree!

Q: So, is this like a spin-off to your Poison Blood Series?

A: It’s a follow-on series, from Amber’s point of view. It takes place after the events of Poison Blood, Book 4, the final book in that series. However, I’ve written Witch’s Blood, Book 1so that you can read and enjoy it and not feel lost if you haven’t read the Poison Blood books yet. I tried my best not to include too many spoilers for anyone that wants to read the Poison Blood Series after reading Bloodless, so I’ve tried not to refer to the events in those books if I didn’t absolutely have to. It wasn’t easy :)
A few things that may not have made sense in this book will do so in Book 2 when I go into spoilery mode, so hopefully a lot of your questions will be answered then.

Before reading the subsequent books in the Witch’s Blood Series however, I would highly recommend reading the Poison Blood Series first. This is because there will be spoilers for the Poison Blood Series in the rest of the books in the Witch’s Blood Series, and it will spoil it for you if you decide to read the Poison Blood Series afterwards.

Q: Okay, so what’s the Poison Blood Series about, then? Will I like it?

A: The blurb for the first book in the series, Poison Blood, Book 1: Revelation, is below, so you can find out more about it from that, and the first two books in the series are free to download, so you can start catching up right now!


"I don’t know what blood tastes like to a human. I’d never even licked a tiny drop of it from a pricked finger, let alone suck on a bleeding cut.

Now it’s my only food source."

Meet teenage runaway Ellie. She’s snarky, witty, funny, and has issues with her mother, just like any other 17-year-old girl.

She’s also a vampire.

Days before her 18th birthday, the mysterious and handsome immortal Christian, turned her into a creature that she loathes, forcing her to leave her old life behind forever and move to London. Thrust into the supernatural world, full of magic and danger, Ellie doesn’t want to be a killer.

She doesn’t even like to drink blood.

But Christian wasn’t completely honest about why he’d taken a romantic interest in her, and he wasn’t the only one keeping things from her, either.

Her mother was hiding the same secret.

Ellie was never an ordinary teenager, and now, she’s no ordinary teen vampire. When she discovers why she’s not like others of her kind, why she protects humans instead of hunting them, she realises that her life is about to change all over again.

And the world as she knows it will never be the same...

Download this book for FREE from:
Amazon US  |  Amazon UK  |   iBooks US UK   |   B&N Nook Store

Poison Blood, Book 2: Absolution is also free to download and answers some of the questions raised in Book 1, while asking many more...

Download Book 2 for FREE from:
Amazon US   |  Amazon UK  |   iBooks US UK   |  B&N Nook Store 

What Readers Said About the Poison Blood Series:

“Hooked on the Poison Blood series.” 5-stars
“Awesome.” 5-stars
“Loved this series.” 5-stars
“This was great, couldn’t put it down.” 5-stars
“A great book.” 5-stars
“I loved this book.” 5-stars
“Amazingly interesting.” 5-stars


And once you've caught up on the Poison Blood Series, you can continue with the Witch's Blood books with Bloodshed:

Available at the Amazon Kindle Store. Click this link to download:

Also on Kobo  |  iBooks  |  B&N Nook  | Smashwords













Witch's Blood, Book 3: Bloodlust (Coming Soon!)


Wednesday 27 February 2019

Soulmates Saga Book 1 #FREE for Limited Time

So, you might have noticed that the Soulmates Saga has been re-branded. New book titles, new covers, but same great love story. Book 1, Every Little Piece of You (previously published as Chasing Pavements) is currently free to download, so don't miss out. Offer ends February 28, 2019.

If you're interested in learning more, click this link:

Like all my other books, it's also available on:
iBooks   |   B&N Nook   |   Kobo |   Smashwords 


Book Details
Length: 110,000 words
Genre: Contemporary Romance / Clean Romance / Diverse Romance / Interracial Romance / Romantic Drama / Women’s Fiction

Mood: Inspirational / Feel Good / Coming of Age / Dark
Content: Sexy but No explicit sex scenes / No erotica
Audience: New Adult & College / Adult / Female Readers

Recommended for: Readers that enjoy romance novels with serious issues and characters with depth. This is a story about life, love, friendship, family, music, art, destiny and soul mates.





And the first two books in my teen urban fantasy/YA paranormal romance series, the Poison Blood series, can be downloaded for free via:

Amazon |  iBooks US UK   |   B&N Nook Store   |   Smashwords





PB1 Book Details
Length: 29,000 words
GenreYA Paranormal Romance / Teen Vampire Romance / Young Adult Paranormal Fantasy / Teen & YA Urban Fantasy / Young Adult Science Fiction & Fantasy / Supernatural Romance / Fantasy Romance / Sparkling Vampires
Mood: Dark / Humorous / Coming of age
Content: No violence / No explicit sex scenes / No erotica
Audience: Teen / Young Adult / New Adult / Adult
Recommended for: Readers that love all things related to the Chosen One, vampires, slayers and witches!