GoodReads

Last weekend, I attended the Romance Author Mastermind conference in Houston, hosted by Skye Warren. It was a terrific conference, and like all the best ones, it sent me home with a huge list of ideas.

Some Like It Hot, book #7 in the Flatiron Five series of contemporary romances by Deborah CookeOne of the things I realized that I’m under-utilizing – or maybe not using well at all! – is GoodReads. I think of it as a reader environment, where readers can talk about books with other readers. This is all good, but there are still things I can do there.

About once a year, I go into GR and update or correct the information about my books – the description, the ISBN’s and the series information, typically – but that has been the extend of my engagement in recent years. I’ve been lucky to have readers add my books for me there, but now I’m going to be more pro-active.

You can follow me at Goodreads. I have three profiles, although only two of them are active.

First, there’s my Deborah Cooke profile. This blog posts automatically on that profile.

It’s right here.

You can also add my upcoming books to your To Read Shelf. The cool thing is that when you do this, GR sends you a notification when the book is published.

Here’s Dragon’s Kiss, coming December 10.Dragon's Kiss, book two of the DragonFate novels, a series of paranormal romances by Deborah Cooke

Here’s the Dragonfire Companion, coming December 31.

Here’s Some Like it Hot, coming February 25.

Here’s Dragon’s Heart, coming May 26.

Here’s Dragon’s Mate, coming October 27.

I see that I’m due to sort out some series details again – this happens because Amazon doesn’t allow decimals in their numbering, or prequels numbered 0. The other portals and GR do, but now Amazon feeds metadata to GR. I’ll dig in over the holidays.

Pearl Beyond Price, book two of the Unicorn Trilogy of medieval romances by Claire DelacroixI also have a Claire Delacroix profile. The blog from Claire’s website (http://delacroix.net) posts automatically on that profile.

Here’s Claire’s profile on Goodreads.

Right now, there’s only one book you can add. Here’s Pearl Beyond Price, coming December 31.

When I get a few minutes, I’ll add GR links to the individual book pages on my websites.

GoodReads Giveaway of The Crusader’s Kiss

The Crusader's Kiss, #3 in the Champions of St Euphemia series of medieval romances by Claire DelacroixThe second Goodreads Giveaway that goes live today is for signed print copies of The Crusader’s Kiss.

This is the third book in my Champions of St. Euphemia series of medieval romances. After Bartholomew earns his spurs, he returns home to the north of England to settle an old score. I had a lot of fun with Bartholomew and Anna’s story – he’s a hidden heir and she’s a rebel with a cause.

You can enter the giveaway right here. Winners will be chosen on February 1, 2017.

More Goodreads

Goodreads doesn’t have an elegant way for authors to link pseudonyms. If an author (like me) writes under multiple names, he or she must create multiple Goodreads accounts to claim those multiple names. They’ve said for years that they were working on changing this, so for years, I’ve only had my Claire Delacroix Goodreads account. I started with this one because I was republishing my backlist titles and wanted to upload the covers, link those editions, etc. etc.

Claire Delacroix is on Goodreads right here.

Well, I finally caved in – because the multiple-names feature clearly isn’t happening soon – and created a second identity for Deborah Cooke. This week, I dove into that and updated it all – phew! Deborah Cooke is on Goodreads right here.

The only issue is that I can’t have my blog feed to both author pages. It’s already linked to Claire’s Goodreads page, so Deborah has to do without.

Another job done!

 

Goodreads Ask-An-Author

I’m signed up for the Ask An Author feature at Goodreads, as of this week. If you have a question, pop on over and ask it. (Although most of you who visit my blog would probably just ask me here, if there was something you wanted to know.)

This link will take you to my GR author page, and you can see the Ask An Author feature in the right column. You have to have a Goodreads account to use the feature, but it’s free.

New Excerpt for The Warrior’s Prize

The Warrior's Prize, a medieval romance by Claire Delacroix and book #4 in the True Love Brides SeriesThe Warrior’s Prize, which is Elizabeth’s book and #4 of my True Love Brides series, will be available on December 29. The book manuscript has just gone back to my editor again, and I expect that few of you will be surprised that Rafael insisted upon telling the story his way instead of mine. I had originally thought that Elizabeth and Rafael’s romance would begin at Christmas at Kinfairlie, but as soon as I dug into the story, I realized that it had to begin when they first meet at Ravensmuir, because that’s when they begin to influence each other. So, the beginning of The Warrior’s Prize now overlaps the ending of The Frost Maiden’s Kiss in terms of time – but there are scenes we didn’t witness in Malcolm and Catriona’s book, and perspectives we didn’t see.

I’m really happy with the shape of the book – Rafael was right! – and can’t wait for you to read it, too. As a result of this change, though, I’ve updated the excerpt from the book on the website. The cover copy will be tweaked before publication as well, but I’m waiting on my editor’s input on that. You might want to hop on over and read the new excerpt this morning. 🙂

Remember also that there’s a Goodreads Giveaway still in process, with ten signed trade paperback copies of the book available to be won. You can enter for a chance to win, right here.