A while ago I posted the first new Hot for the Boss cover. During the second part of this year, I'll be revamping those books, including re-editing and new formatting. All part of my project to create a distinct look for my books.

So, I posted the second cover on Facebook a while ago, and totally forgot to post it here!!

Isn't it gorgeous?

I also posted a teaser from Loving Rowan. I'm still working on this book and it doesn't go for editing for another couple of weeks, so very much still a work in progress. But, more characters I'm totally in love with.

Rowan is shy and awkward, and I get her so much. She struggles to distinguish between someone wanting to be friends, and someone with a genuine romantic interest in her. So, she is a challenge, but has such a big heart, and just needs someone to help give her the confidence to be herself. The book is from her point of view, and also from Kyle's. He wants more than friendship from her, but convincing her of that isn't easy.

    I made my way over to the table with the food, and she sorted it all out in the regimented way she handled everything. So much of the time, my life was haphazard, I had no order to it. Rowan’s life was organised, and she broke her activities into specific slots of time. I think it was her way of coping to being alone, and I had thrown her schedule into disarray.
    Not sorry.
    “How come you’re so organised?” I said. “I’d be tempted to just throw all the food onto the tray and we help ourselves.”
    She looked at me, horrified. “I like everything to be in order. Just like my work.”
    “We’re not at work, Rowan. We’re in playtime.” I dangled a fry in front of her nose, and laughed as she bit at it, grabbing the end of it and sucking it into her mouth.
    “Is that right, young lady?” I asked, waggling my eyebrows at her for effect. She blushed, looking down at the table and shaking her head at me.
    She picked up a fry, throwing it at my face and hitting me square on the nose. “Oh, like that, is it?” I laughed.

<3

I have announced this on my Facebook page, but here are the details for my next release!

Here is the blurb of Loving Rowan:

Rowan, Andrew, and Charlie were the best  of friends for as long as they all could remember. Rowan adores Charlie because  she’s another girl with a boys’ name. She’s in love with Andrew, and sure that
one day they’ll live happily ever after. But when Andrew and Charlie break her  heart, the painfully shy and socially awkward Rowan struggles to form new  relationships.

Befriending Kyle, the son of her boss, she quickly slots  him into the best friend role vacated by Andrew, assuming that is what he wants.  Kyle has other ideas about how the direction of their relationship should go,  but when his life takes an unexpected twist,  Andrew isn’t ready to let go of
the girl who grew up idolising him either. And he's prepared to do anything to  keep her.

Expected publication date is the 18th of August, and the cover reveal date is yet to be set. What I can say is that it's as gorgeous as my other covers and I can't wait to share.

Firstly, my planned website and domain update will be coming this week, so this website might be down for some people for a short period of time. I'm not going anywhere, though! 

Secondly, I want to share a small part of my new book. It's unedited, but I'm really close to finishing!

When I wrote Taking Chances, I took Lauren's issues seriously. I felt her pain as she struggled to control her drinking problem. My heart went out to her as she had to wake up to what she was doing to herself and the people she loved. It was hard and it was heavy. I didn't realise quite how much until a friend of mine told me it was different. I asked how different. She said that she was used to 'light and fluffy' from me, and that this was a lot darker than my previous books. 

She was right. It is a serious issue, and I hope I handled it appropriately. I didn't want it to be an issue which was instantly fixed by falling in love, because that's not how real life works. Lauren needed to work out what was important to her and to work on her problems.

This new thing I'm working on was supposed to be a lighter piece, and it is for the most part. There is heartbreak, joy and love with a slightly dark twist. So, here's the first excerpt I want to share with you. :)

--

There is literally nothing quite like finding out you’ve wasted your whole life on someone who doesn’t love you back. Standing in the middle of the living room, I felt searing pain roll down my face as the tension built inside, my body aching at the realisation that my unrequited love would always be just that.

I’d been on love with Andrew my whole life, and now I stood in front of him and in front of Charlie. She was our other best friend and partner in crime. My mother called us the Three Musketeers. 

Where three once stood, there now were two, and I went from being a musketeer to feeling like a third wheel.

Andrew looked at me, rolling his eyes, as if he didn’t care. Charlie was the one who dripped of guilt, her mouth downturned in such a sad expression that if it wasn’t for what had just happened, I would have hugged her tight and told her everything would be all right.

Except it wasn’t.

My life was so regimented, I was a creature of habit who thrived on routine, and my best friends knew it. But this day, this one day, I’d come home earlier than usual, just in time to catch them emerging from Charlie’s room. They were arm in arm and smiling at each other with that intimate look that lovers share. Any earlier and I might have even heard them in the act. My heart ached at the thought of that.

Not that Andrew had ever made a commitment to me, or even told me he loved me. Not in that way. I just always thought we would end up together. He was the first in my life for everything, except for the one thing he now apparently shared with Charlie. They were lovers.

“Rowan, it’s not what it looks like,” Charlie said. I could see the strain on her face as she struggled to hold back the tears. Of all the people in my life, she was the one who knew just how much this would hurt me. 

“Of course it is,” Andrew snapped. “I told you we should have told her instead of sneaking around, just in case we hurt her feelings. Now look.”

I just stared at him. Talking about me as if I wasn’t there. He had been my best friend from birth, and he didn’t even have the decency to talk directly to me.

“I’m sorry, Rowan. I knew you wouldn’t like this, so I did ask Andrew to keep it a secret. We never meant to hurt you. I swear. We love you.”

I just shook my head. “No.”

“No what?” 

I sat on the couch, flicking on the television as if they weren’t there. They sat either side of me, talking to me as if I was a child. I shut them out, disappearing into my own little world, the world inside my head where no-one can hurt me. There was just noise outside that space, white noise that I couldn't completely get rid of. It was like that sound where the radio is just off the station, the sound of static. When it built to the point that I could no longer ignore it, I stood.

Walking past them, I went into my room and slammed the door. Screw them both.

Taking Chances came from a suggestion by a reader, but I quickly fell in love with Lauren's story. She became as precious to me as Cassie. I've been re-reading the book and I wanted to share an excerpt that I love.

--

She turned back towards the house and smiled, her eyes glistening with tears. He went to her, taking her in his arms as she cried.

"It's all right, Lauren. Mark knew you loved him, I'm sure of that."

"It just hurts so much."

He lifted her chin with his finger to look her in the eyes. "I'm so sorry I never got to meet him. I know Mark was your whole world."

She nodded. "He was just always there. He wasn't just my brother. When my parents died, he became my father, too. When he died I felt that loss all over again."

"Well, now you have me. I know it's not the same as blood, but I'll never turn my back on you. You're my whole world."

Lauren buried her face in his chest, and he felt her shake as she cried. He kissed the top of her head, stroking her hair to comfort her.

"Let's go to bed. I think a snuggle and a good night's sleep is in order."

He felt her laughing now, her shoulders shaking as the giggles took hold.

"What is it?"

"I love how that's our thing. Having a snuggle."

"Me too, baby. Come on."

Ethan led her inside the house, pausing at the door while she went ahead. He looked up at the sky where Lauren had been looking.

She's safe. I'll take care of her from here.

He was sure the stars twinkled in response.

Nothing too major, but I am changing domain and DNS providers for the domain ariadnewayne.co.nz shortly.

This means that there may be some down time while I switch over, but I've set things up in such a way that any outage will be minimal (helps that I'm a geek married to a geek).

So, in the next week or so this website might disappear for a short time, but it will be back! Also, with the addition of the domain ariadnewayne.com for those less familiar with .co.nz domains. :)

This morning, I was saddened to hear that Rik Mayall had died. Growing up in the 80s, The Young Ones was everywhere, and as a pre-teen, I adored the show that put him and Adrian Edmondson et al on the world stage.

It was what was to be the final term of Margaret Thatcher being Prime Minister of the UK, and a tide was turning away from conservatism. My family talked politics a lot, so I got the political jokes, laughed at the violence, and gagged my way through the episode where Neil sneezes constantly.

But, it didn't end there. From The Young Ones, I moved onto Filthy, Rich and Catflap with them (for some reason an often overlooked, but brilliantly funny show), The New Statesman, Bottom, all the short films put out under The Comic Strip, Guest House Paradiso, even Drop Dead Fred.

There was nothing Rik Mayall was in that I thought was bad. He was funny, and not afraid of poking fun at himself.

So RIP Rick, Richard Richard, Alan B'Stard, Lord Flashheart, Fred. 

And in the immortal words of Rick:
This house will become a shrine, and punks and skins and rastas will all gather round and hold their hands in sorrow for their fallen leader. And all the grown-ups will say, "But why are the kids crying?" And the kids will say, "Haven't you heard? Rick is dead! The People's Poet is dead!"

A couple of weeks ago, I invested in my first DSLR camera. When I was younger, photography was something I was keenly interested in, but I never had the money in my teens to buy a decent camera and it was another thing that went on the wish list for the future.

With the advent of digital cameras and phone cameras, I didn't think anything more of it. My phone now takes a decent camera, so I put away the little digital camera that I had and haven't touched it since before my daughter was born three years ago.

One morning recently, we woke up and my daughter who is a huge space fanatic, pointed at the moon and said "take a photo." My phone camera took an awful photo, so I thought I'd look around and invest in something decent.

With the help of a friend who knew what they were looking at, I bought a Canon 1100D with a 18-55mm lens. When another friend of mine found I was trying to take moon shots, he gave me a 55-250mm lens that he wasn't using. The results have been amazing!

This was taken a few nights ago from my deck.

I'm so happy with the results. Here's another one of the sun setting a few nights ago.

I think it was definitely worth the investment, and I will post more photos as I learn how to use the camera and get out and about with it. :)

I am sick. Horrible, winter cold sick. I can barely keep my eyes open, fighting the urge to go to sleep and have been like that for the last few days. I haven't been this ill for a long time.

BUT, I am still awake because right at this moment Another Chance is the number  one contemporary romance title on iBooks UK and number fourteen overall. This is so crazy, and exciting!

While I am working on the next book, I also thought that winter would be a good opportunity to go through my back catalogue, and tidy up anything that was missed back when I pressed the publish button. It would be a quiet time of year with not being able to go out and about with the bad weather, I thought, and I know that prior to Taking Chances, there was space for improvement. Though, I'm finding that sometimes, it doesn't matter how many pairs of eyes you have on something, little things still slip through.

It really doesn't seem so quiet right now. The beauty of e-books however, is that it's easy to fix those little things that bug us. I have a much stronger team of people helping me now than I did even six months ago, and going forward things will be even better!

When I started my self-publishing journey, I had no idea how amazing it would be. Eighteen months in, I have had the bitter disappointment of failure, the highs of success, and found some truly wonderful, caring, kind people along the way. I have been truly blessed.

And now, I'm going back to sleep. :)