If I Say No is available for Pre-Order :)

Psst... guess what?

The book that so many of you have been waiting for is up for pre-order! If I Say No, the sequel to If I Say Yes, can be pre-ordered from all the major e-book stores right now.

The expected release date is January 29, 2021. The pre-order price is only 99c/99p to make up for the delay in getting this book out to you and as a way for me to say thank you for rooting for this Duology all these years. Post release price will be $3.99/£3.99. So, definitely take advantage of this low pre-order price :)

If you previously subscribed to my newsletter, then you would have received a longer message about this last night, and I'm glad that some of you are as excited for January 2021 as I am :)

The links are below:

Amazon Kindle

Apple Books

Barnes & Noble Nook

Kobo

PS. Don't get too attached to these covers, I might be changing them a little...... :)

Shell didn't want an arranged marriage. Until it was arranged with Imran. If only his best friend Seb wasn't trying to sabotage the wedding.

Seb never set out to hurt his best friend. Or lose him over a girl. Little did he know that he might end up losing everything that ever mattered to him.

If I Say No is the concluding part of the Love & Alternatives Duology, a contemporary wedding romance set in London.

Praise for If I Say Yes:
"I loved this story & inhaled all its goodness of love, friendship & culture!"
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
~Apple Books US Review

"Great story. It kept me really Engaged through out the entire novel. Cannot wait for book two to be released!"
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
~Amazon US Review

"Sweet, cute romance with a serious edge to it sometimes."
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
~Apple Books UK Review

"I loved this story! I was up into the early hours wanting to read more to know what happens next. I read it in just a few days because I just couldn't put it down. It was refreshing to have a slightly different take on romance from a Bengali point of view and I was really interested in learning a little bit about the culture and traditions too. The storyline really did keep me on my toes, not knowing what the characters were going to do next, and I loved the fact the main character (Shell) really came out her shell (ha!) as the story progressed too."
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
~Amazon UK Review

"Honestly, I am fumbling for words to convey how I feel after reading this book, and what I really want to say is "Damn it Sebastian open the door!" I really did enjoy this book. I hope the second one comes out soon."
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
~Amazon US Review

From A Single Image To An Entire Trilogy

Who would have thought that 2020, the year of the global pandemic, would be the first year in which I published an entire series? I did it, though, and it’s still sinking in. I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for reading, commenting, sharing, and retweeting my blogs and tweets this year (some of you have been doing so since 2012!). I really appreciate it. I don't always get to thank you all personally (I just RT you back, don't I?), but that doesn't mean that I’m not thankful. Thank you and good luck with your writing and publishing endeavours *hugs* :)

I almost delayed the launch of the Heir to the Throne series finale until next year, but I didn’t want the people that had pre-ordered Book 3 to wait that long. And I wanted it out of the way so I could truly move on. For some reason, a series doesn't feel complete until I've hit the publish button for the finale, so I'm glad I had enough incentive to release the final book in this high fantasy trilogy (came out Friday, July 3, 2020), and not sit with it for another year.

I still find myself surprised that it was a stock image that got me writing epic fantasy for the first time in my adult life. Of course, there were a number of other factors that helped shape the premise and plot of the Heir to the Throne Trilogy, but what put things into motion for me was the image of the girl on the original cover of Book 1, Heir to the Throne. I saw it on the Pixabay site in March 2018 and downloaded it immediately.

Obviously, the girl wasn’t appropriate for the covers of my contemporary romance novels or my urban fantasy books. “I’ll just have to write a book about her, then,” I’d joked to myself. Almost instantly, my brain came up with various ideas for how to go about it. I couldn’t stop thinking about a story that my mum used to tell me when I was a kid, and I wondered if I could do 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. The King threw a tantrum at that and banished her from the kingdom.

“She was taken in by a family in a faraway land 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 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.

Seen as I was contemplating doing a retelling of this bedtime story, I thought I should Google it. If I'm going to tell people that my 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.

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 when I wasn’t running around after The Baby (Toddler now). I can’t remember when I actually stopped outlining and 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!).

If Heir to the Throne had started off as a retelling of The King and his Daughters, the series would still have ended up as something else entirely. Most of the books I write change and evolve into something much more epic than I expect, and this trilogy was no exception.

I really hope that readers take to Aaryana like they have to Ellie, Mukti, and Shell from my other three series and that they enjoy a trilogy that was inspired by just a single image.

Get the series from your favourite ebook store (Book 1 free at selected retailers for a few more days):
Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, Smashwords, and Amazon.

Release Day Ramblings (again)

Happy Friday! Today, the final book in my latest series came out. The Heir to the Throne trilogy is complete. That’s a trilogy of complete trilogies for me, yay!

This is the first time, though, that I’ve published an entire series in the same year (my life keeps getting in the way, doesn't it? This year, Covid 19 tried to interfere). Nothing went to plan in 2020 but at least this series is out there. I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for reading, commenting, sharing, and retweeting my blogs and tweets this year (some of you have been doing so since 2012!). I really appreciate it. I don't always get to thank you all personally (I just RT you back, don't I?), but that doesn't mean I’m not thankful. Thank you and good luck with your writing and publishing endeavors *hugs*

I almost delayed the release of the series finale, Keys to the Realm, until next year due to the global pandemic, but in the end, I didn’t want the people that pre-ordered Book 3, to wait that long. And I wanted it out of the way so I could move on with my other projects. A series doesn't feel done unless it’s out in the world!

So, how’s release day going? Good, thanks. Would have been better if it wasn’t the year of the COVID 19 pandemic, but I’ve consoled myself all year with these words: It wasn’t meant to be.

Thanks to the pre-orders at the Apple Books Store Australia (all but one of those pre-orders being placed before the lockdown period, though; pre-order and post-release price: 4.99), Keys to the Realm charted at no. 1 in the Sci Fi & Fantasy category in Australia. 

And no. 66 in the overall Apple Books Australia chart ⬇️. Not bad for someone that writes on her phone while lying in bed (degenerative lumbar spine disease, chronic back pain). And only when the Toddler is napping or has gone down for the night. Plus, it was only on pre-order for a couple of months before release :)

Unlike Amazon, which has over 3,500 categories, Apple Books only has 14 category bestseller charts (+ the overall chart, of course) in each territory, with seven of them being fiction categories. A book can only chart in one category: the primary category selected during publishing (so my book couldn’t chart in the YA category chart as well as the SFF chart, even though YA is one of the non-primary categories tagged to it). And as far as I know, chart positions are based on the number of sales/downloads; Apple doesn’t use any other method to calculate chart positions. No fancy algorithms and whatnot.

The pre-orders for the finale mean that the Australians that read the first two books liked them; at the very least, Heir to the Throne and Tied to the Crown were 3-star reads for them. Reasonable assumption, right? But look⬇️ no ratings or reviews for Book 1 at the retailer at this time. See, I told you—my readers seem to fall into the group that just don’t rate or review books—the 99% of readers that don’t rate/review books they read. I accepted this a long time ago *shrug* 

The thing is though, if I’d known back in 2019—or even in January 2020—that 2020 was going to turn out like this, I wouldn’t have released these three books in February, March, and July respectively. Or even in 2020. This trilogy deserved to be launched under better circumstances. I genuinely believe it has the potential to become more successful than my Poison Blood Series. And if I’m completely honest, I would have given into my husband’s nagging and queried literary agents for these novels.

With every reader DM I get about my books, my hubby nags me to pursue traditional publishing. No matter how many times I explain the whole right of first refusal thing to him. While I was writing this trilogy, though, he was pushier than ever about me trying to get an agent—seen as these books weren’t published yet. Confession: I did give in and do some research on agents and I even thought I had one very suitable agent I could query. Out of all my books, I thought I was writing one that might fit the trad pub model. “Just let me polish up Book 1,” I kept telling my husband—and myself.

But then, this dream agent suffered bit of a tragic twist in her life and I took that as a sign that perhaps I wasn’t meant to pursue that avenue at all. And I put the first two books in the series up for pre-order when I was done writing them.

~Print copies arrived last night :)

One of the best things about self-publishing is getting to market fast. Capitalising on reader appetite and market trends, but with the people of the world slowing down due to the pandemic and lockdown, getting to market fast in 2020 became irrelevant. That’s why, if I hadn’t released Books 1 and 2 in the first week of February and the first week of March respectively, I think I would have started querying agents with this series during the quarantine period.

Anyway. I didn’t know last year what I know now, so again, I tell myself this: It wasn’t meant to be.

What I’m doing now—rambling on release day, July 3, 2020, this is what was meant to happen all along. And it’s okay. I’m so thankful for what I’ve achieved, and for all the things I have in my life at this time, the what ifs are forgotten almost as soon as I think of them.

~The Dungeon Keeper’s Rhyme

I may not even have written this series in the first place if it wasn't for a stock image! A stock image got me writing epic fantasy for the first time in my adult life. Of course, there were a number of other factors that helped shape the premise and plot of the Heir to the Throne Trilogy, but what put things into motion for me was the image of the girl on the original cover of Book 1, Heir to the Throne. I saw it on Pixabay in March 2018⬇️ and downloaded it immediately:

Obviously, the girl wasn’t appropriate for the covers of my contemporary romance novels or my urban fantasy books. “I’ll just have to write a book about her, then,” I’d joked to myself. Almost instantly, my brain came up with various ideas for how to go about it. I couldn’t stop thinking about a story that my mum used to tell me when I was a kid, and I wondered if I could do 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—one of the Princesses said she loved him like she loved salt. The King threw a tantrum at that and banished her from the kingdom.

“She was taken in by a family in a faraway land 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 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 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: 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.

~My warrior Princess <3

As a child, I thought my mum had made up the story, or her mum did, or her mum’s mum. In my teens and young adult days, I convinced myself 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.

Now that I was contemplating doing a retelling of this bedtime story, I thought I should Google it. If I'm going to tell people that my 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, 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 or a re-imagining of that story, but I did take inspiration from certain elements from the tale my mum told me—a King with quite a few daughters, the favourite Princess wrongly getting punished—and the stock image helped me make a few other decisions about genre, setting, etc.

Within the space of a couple of days, I had a mental outline for the book and started fleshing it out the plot on the MS Word app on my iPhone—when I wasn’t running around after The Baby (Toddler now). 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!).

~Our brooding love interest <3

A message to my fellow 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 work. You'll see that very quickly when you start reading it.

~Alternative cover editions (ebook)

If Heir to the Throne had started off as a retelling of The King and his Daughters, the series would still have ended up as something else entirely. Most of the books I write evolve into something much bigger than I expect, and this trilogy was no exception. Believe me when I say that the series finale, Keys to the Realm, is EPIC, so give this trilogy a try if you’re interested in this genre. 

Here are five things you can expect from these books:

One) This series revolves around mythical sea creatures. Think Game of Thrones/Throne of Glass with “mermaids” (but with my own spin on the mythology).

Two) I love a good origin story—I like to explain how the magical beings in my stories came to exist—so this trilogy has one, too.

Three) No corsets. These books are set in a completely made up fictional world—they’re not inspired by a particular time or place in history—so why would I include something that I don’t believe in? There’s no mention of corsets in this trilogy because they don’t exist in this world. (Nor do guns or bullets!)

Four) There’s forbidden romance, enemies-to-lovers (hate-to-love), and friends-to-lovers, too. But I won’t tell you which couple gets which trope :)

Five) The lead character’s body shape is not typical for YA. Usually, the girls are “tiny” compared to the big, bear-like love interests, or they’re “of medium height, have a small waist and great boobs”. Aaryana—like all her sisters—is very tall, flat-chested, hardly has any curves, and her training has helped her gain a strong, powerful, muscular, athletic body.

I really hope readers take to Aaryana like they have to Ellie, Mukti, and Shell from my other three series and that they enjoy a trilogy that was inspired by just a single image.

Get the series from your favourite ebook store:

>>Click Here<<

So, what’s next for me? Well, I have another release scheduled for this year—I’m thinking September time, but I’ll actually have to sort out my dashboard with a concrete date! The project needs just a little more polishing, but it should be ready for the first week of September if I stick to that date. A few more surprises in store for 2020 too, so keep your eyes peeled.

Also, I am finally, finally, trying to finish the highly anticipated—highly anticipated by the readers that have DM’d me about it over the years, that is, LOL—conclusion to my Love & Alternatives Duology. And to ensure that I don’t stray from this project as I have since If I Say Yes came out in 2017, I will put it up for pre-order, with a tentative release date of... drum roll please... last week of January 2021! Hopefully, that will give me the urgency to finish this story at last. Now, I actually have to put it up for pre-order... Maybe this weekend...

There are a few more projects I have planned for next year, but I won’t divulge too much about them just yet. Things never go to plan in my life—or my writing/publishing journey—and it’s best that I just take it one day at a time.

With regards blogging, I hope to continue posting new content every week, as I have been so far this year, but once I run out of ideas for articles... it will probably be on an ad hoc basis :)

Until next time, cheerio xx and here are those links again to my trilogy :) and some cool artwork reflecting the series finale ⬇️.

Get the series from your favourite ebook store:

>>Click Here<<

~Aaryana Vijkanti

~Seth Fresdan

~Aaryana

~Aaryana

~ Aaryana

Best Series Finales

There’s something about the last installment in a series... Game of Thrones fans thought the final TV series was rushed and were a little disappointed by it. I myself have found the finales of some bestselling book series a little disappointing, too. I have this strange thing with Cassandra Clare books: I always enjoy the second book in her trilogies the most and don’t get along well with the final book in any of her series. That changed with Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices #3), as I did really like it, but I would still rank it as third favourite in that trilogy *shrug*

Although I really liked Sarah J Maas’s Kingdom of Ash (KOA; the final book in the Throne of Glass series), there were a couple of books in that seven-book series that I loved more than the last book. And of course, I wasn’t alone in feeling a little underwhelmed by A Court of Wings and Ruin (ACOWAR), the third book in Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses trilogy.

This shows that wrapping up a series is no easy task.

When you find yourself writing rather unusual endings to your fantasy series, like yours truly here, the days and weeks leading up to the release of a series finale of your own can be a very nerve wracking time. Ever since I wrote the last sentence of Keys to the Realm, which released Friday 3rd July, 2020, I’ve been stressing out about what readers will think of this conclusion to my Heir to the Throne Trilogy. Will it be a KOA or a ACOWAR? A Good Place or good riddance?

To distract myself from this anxiety, I compiled a list of my favourite series finales from the world of books and films. And so, in no particular order...

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part II (film)
All but the last two Breaking Dawn films were a disappointment for me and the last film was by far the best of the lot. I won’t say much more about this series; I know us Twihards are a dying breed...

The Raven King (book)
The Raven Cycle is one of my favourite YA (magical realism?) series, and I was very happy with how it was wrapped up. Especially as it ended in a way that I hadn’t been able to predict. The author did something different with it, like I try to with my series finales, and it played out wonderfully. Highly recommend this series for fans of YA!

Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part II (film)
When it comes to the Hunger Games, I prefer the film adaptations over the books, even though I read the books first. When I read the series, I wasn’t that into dystopian fiction (still not that into this genre these days, either) and I thought the books were alright. I didn’t like the main character but I appreciated why she was written that way. I applaud the author for being brave enough to write that kind of character in a YA series. It’s so easy to write a likable hero in this genre.

The films were so goooood, though! I loved every minute of them. They were better than the books for me, and I rarely feel that way about book-to-film adaptations, especially if I read the books first. I liked the main character in the films and the final movie was great.

The Dark Knight Rises (film)
Christopher Nolan. Christian Bale. Enough said. But I have to say a bit more: This film trilogy is one of my all-time favourites and will always be in a league of its own. The last film in this series was fantastic, even Anne Hathaway couldn’t ruin it for me. I am a huge fan of Robert Pattinson, so I’m excited about the new Batman film he’s going to star in. I wonder how it will compare to Nolan’s films...

Always and Forever, Lara Jean (book)
This could easily have gone in the wrong direction because the first two books were so cute and were wrapped up quite nicely with a fluffy bow, but I really enjoyed the last book in this YA contemporary trilogy. One of the series that I re-read whenever I’m in a reading slump or need some feel good vibes. I wrote reviews here.

The Last Star (book)
My favourite YA dystopia series is The 5th Wave trilogy. The last book was really, really good. I wrote a review here.

Ascend (book)
I really loved the Tryll Trilogy, and the last book in the series was an excellent wrap-up. Amanda Hocking really paved the way for indie authors and these three books of hers will always have a special place in my heart.

I haven’t included any TV series because most of the ones I've watched/enjoyed didn’t finish quite so strongly. That said, the last ever episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was pretty amazing, even though that final series wasn’t my favourite of the show. Or even second favourite. Still an awesome show—my all-time fave :)

What are your favourite series finales?

Thanks for reading and I hope you get to check out the books I’ve mentioned if you’re into these genres. If you’re interested in my work, you can check out my books >>here <<

Release Day Ramblings: writer’s voice and brand, memorable characters, and more...

Heir to the Throne, the first book in my brand new royalty fantasy series, is available to download from your favourite retailers now. Books 2 and 3 are releasing soon.

I am always excited and nervous on release day—well, release week—but with this book, this series, I am more so than usual. That’s probably the reason behind my ramblings today! This is my first high fantasy/epic fantasy series—a genre I haven’t written in since my childhood days—so, I’m eager to see what readers think of it. And scared of what they’ll think of it.

There have been more pre-orders for this book than all my previous pre-orders combined, so I know that people are eager to get their hands on it. Just a little pressure, but it’s very welcome. Needless to say, I’m very proud of this trilogy and I believe it will satisfy its target audience. Think Throne of Glass without fae; Game of Thrones without dragons—but with a different mythical creature instead.

The style of writing in this trilogy is different to that of my six urban fantasy books, and of course, the story is worlds apart from my four contemporary romance novels. I switch up my style—and therefore my ‘voice’—depending on the genre I’m writing in and the story that I’m telling. Perhaps that means I don’t have a ‘voice’? And perhaps that’s not a good thing? Rest assured, my ‘voice’ within each individual series is consistent.

One thing that is always the same in all my works, regardless of genre, is the character-driven aspect of them. I try to ensure that my characters are well thought-out and well-developed, and whether or not you agree with the decisions they sometimes make, I ensure that you understand those decisions. That the characters’ actions make sense to you.

Funnily enough, the romance in my fantasy books is subtle; the love story is a proper sub-plot to the action, suspense, and drama—maybe because my contemporary romance novels revolve around the love story, while the action, suspense, and drama form the sub-plots? Still, the characters are the stars of the show; they’re the ones that stay with the reader.

That’s my brand—characters that feel so real, you’ll forget you’re reading fiction. (Catchy little tag line for my author brand, don’t you think? I must get around to making a banner with it. I came up with it ages ago!) My writing ‘voice’ might change a little—or a lot—with the genre, and you might not recognise it when you read my fantasy novels after reading my contemporary romance books—or vice versa—but you’ll know it’s a Neha Yazmin book because of the depths to the characters.

For me, it’s very important that the audience understands the people in my stories as well as I do—without spending half as much time with them as I do. I give my characters a lot of time, think about them for hours and over days, care about them as though they’re real, and I show that on the page. If they’re not real to me, how will the reader believe them? Why would they care? Why should they spend time with my characters if I didn’t bother to spend enough time on them to make them worthy?

Apart from well-rounded characters, here are a few more things that readers can expect from this trilogy—without giving too much away:

1) This series revolves around mythical creatures that I haven’t written about before, with my own take on them. [Hint: I’ve written about vampires (Poison Blood Series), witches, wizards, and shifters (Witch’s Blood Series). I don’t think that I’ve mentioned these creatures in any of my projects, actually. As I said earlier, you can think of this trilogy as ‘Throne of Glass with ______ instead of fae’ or ‘Game of Thrones with _______ instead of dragons, and none of the sexual content, either.’ I’ll fill in the gaps in a future post—I want you to discover this while reading).]

Two) I love a good origin story—I like to explain how the magical beings in my stories came to exist—so this trilogy gets one, too. [We learned how the vampires in my Poison Blood Series came about, and we’ll discover how the witches in the Witch’s Blood Series came to exist when I complete that series.]

Three) No corsets. These books are set in a completely made up fictional world—they’re not inspired by a particular time or place in history—so why would I include something that I don’t believe in? There’s no mention of corsets in this trilogy because they don’t exist in this world. [The best way to describe the setting of these books is “alternative historical fantasy world”.]

Four) The lead character’s body shape is not typical for the genre. Usually, the girls are tiny compared to the big, bear-like love interests, or they’re of medium height, have a small waist and “great boobs”. Aaryana—like all her sisters—is very tall, flat-chested, hardly has any curves, and her training has helped her gain a strong, powerful, muscular, athletic body.

I really hope that readers take to Aaryana like they have to Ellie, Mukti, and Shell, and that they enjoy a series that was inspired by just a single image (below) that I found on the web (see my ‘story behind the story’ blog post here).

Thanks for reading this post. All the links to this new release are below if you want to read it.

Buy now from:

Kindle

Apple Books

B&N Nook

Kobo

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.

Subscribe to my mailing list to receive an extended preview

(approx. 30% of the 115,000-word novel)

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2017: A Year of Surprises

In 2016, I published three books: Every Little Piece of Us (Soulmates Saga, Book 3), Vampire Prophecy and Vampire Apocalypse (the final two books in the Poison Blood Series) and reached a number of other milestones (as highlighted in this post: 2016: A Year in Review).

I planned to release a further three books in 2017, taking my tally to 10 books in market. One of the planned releases was If I Say Yes (Love & Alternatives #1), which I did manage to get out there, but the other two (the first two books in a new urban fantasy series) remain unpublished.

So, what went wrong? Was there another family tragedy, like the one in 2012, which led to me putting the brakes on my writing and publishing journey again? Did I need another major operation, like the brain surgery in early 2016? Thankfully, the answer to those questions is no. There was no crisis, no medical setback. It was in fact some good news. Good, but unexpected. A pleasant surprise.

I found out in April 2017 that I was going to become a mother for the first time!

The pregnancy wasn’t unplanned. Actually, my husband and I had decided to start trying as soon as my neurosurgeon told me I wouldn't need any more MRI scans. We just didn't expect to get pregnant as soon as we started trying. We knew how hard it can be for a lot of couples, and doctors had told me that the average time for me to get pregnant could be between 12 and 18 months. As a result, I plotted out several books to write in the coming 18 months or so.

Why should pregnancy lead to completing fewer books? you ask. Well, it wouldn’t for many writers, I suppose, and it didn't prevent me from finishing and releasing my latest contemporary romance novel If I Say Yes, but it did slow down the writing of my other WIPs. This is because I suffer from chronic and severe lower back pain, which increases tenfold when I sit or stand for 30 minutes or so. And if I can’t sit at my laptop....

I wrote the majority of If I Say Yes lying down in bed, on my stomach, which didn’t have an adverse effect on my back, and I hoped to write my other books in the same way. But when you have a little person developing inside your growing bump, you can’t, and shouldn’t, lie on your stomach. As a first time mum, I was incredibly anxious about the pregnancy, anyway.

What I ended up doing throughout the course of the pregnancy was spending an hour or two each week at my desk to write what I could, though some weeks, I didn’t write at all, as the pregnancy was adding to the back pain and I didn’t feel comfortable sitting down at all. Plus, with all the hormones and other pregnancy symptoms, I wasn’t always in the mood to write.

Things could have been a lot worse, though. I know because things have been worse for me and my family in recent years, and I’ve heard horror stories about some women and their pregnancies, so I feel very lucky that I was healthy enough and so was the baby. I didn’t expect to be as active and healthy (aside from the back pain, that is) during pregnancy because I’m one of those people that ends up bedridden due to the cold and flu—it really takes its toll on me. So that was a nice surprise.

Another thing that took me by surprise was how maternal I felt towards the end of my pregnancy. Anyone that knows me, will tell you that I love kids. Love playing with them, working with them, and being a fun aunt or cousin to them. But I was never one of those people that always wanted children. There was a long period of time when I didn’t want to have kids at all. Ever. I didn’t get all gooey-eyed when I saw a newborn or toddler. And early on in my pregnancy, I didn’t feel all that maternal. Didn’t feel like a mum-to-be. 

Yes, I felt responsible for the baby and was anxious to make sure it was healthy. I did everything the midwife and doctors advised me to do. But I didn’t feel connected to the baby. Not even when I had my first scan and saw the baby jumping around in my womb (yes, jumping!). It felt real, then, of course, and I shed a few tears of relief to see it moving around happily in my uterus—until then, I had no idea how the baby was doing since I couldn't feel it yet—but I didn’t feel an emotional attachment to it.

Not until I started feeling the baby kick and punch me. That’s when I felt a bond forming between us. Because the baby mainly moved when I sat down or lay down, it felt like it was communicating with me. Like it was saying, ‘Get up, mummy, it’s boring when you’re not moving.” And I’d say, “Sorry, baby, but I need a little rest” or “I have to sit down to eat lunch.” LOL

And so I wonder whether the bonding between mother and child sort of starts before the birth, when the baby makes itself felt and known.

As my due date approached, I found myself loving my unborn child as though I’d already met him. I didn’t  anticipate that at all.

Therefore, 2017 really was a year of surprises, and I’m sure 2018 will bring plenty more.

Now, I just want to take the opportunity to thank you all for reading my blog in 2017, for sharing and retweeting and commenting. Thanks for all your support and have a great 2018.

Thank you for reading this post.

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