Adara VS Author Debut: Successful Indie Launch!
Hello, and welcome to the Canopy! I finally put the author into #authortube with the release of my YA paranormal romance/sci-fi fusion novel Drawing Red!
I am incredibly grateful and humbled to everyone who has supported me over the years. It took me 5 years, but in the end it was longlisted twice, rated 5 stars by Readers’ Favorites, and sold 100+ copies by launch day. Not bad at all!
This video tells my journey, a bit about how the novel began, and where you can find it.
Visual Description:
The visuals are a compilation of various adverts I’ve used during my book launch, as well as footage of me swapping out my writer mug for an author mug.
Transcript
In 2018, I wrote this message on my whiteboard in my office. It reads: an author is a writer who got around to actually writing down their idea. It was a start, after a year of ill health that made me increasingly housebound, and a promise to myself to do something with my life that was productive, while everything else was torn down by chronic illness. Now it's 2024, and here is what I've produced. On sale today. To the right are folders of notes and previous drafts, on my desk which I retired in favour of this chaise longue, as my writing spot. It suits me, since one of my conditions - POTS - means I have to sit with my feet up a lot; and when I sit on it, I'm directly facing two bookcases and the authors who inspire me.
The idea of Drawing Red was sparked about 10 years ago when I was at College one lunchtime, and looking down at a blank sheet of paper. I wondered what would happen if it could communicate back to me. What would it fill the paper with? With ill health giving me a lot of time on my hands, and too much fatigue to physically move, I turned to reading and thinking. And more reading. And more thinking. I'm happy to invite you now into my ya paranormal romance/sci-fi Fusion world. On a side note, POTS is a condition affected by gravity. I couldn't resist tying it in somewhere, or appealing to my geeky fandoms, or paying homage to more recent fairy tale retellings, or the paranormal romance books I read as a teenager. The result: my a little bit of everything with a cheeky nod to Japanese folklore and my love of anime debut mixture.
Thank you to everyone who has bought a copy of my novel. I've been floored by the reception it's received, and by the support I've been given by a bunch of strangers on the internet, writing their own stories, who became my friends when I couldn't leave home. Some of you may remember my Tweets five or so years ago, where I talked about a fascinating book called Think Like A Tree, but no one then knew exactly what that would span into.
The dedication of this novel is to my partner Mr Spence, and to my experience of having to live staring mainly at the same four walls: to anyone who looks for magic in the mundane, you will find it. With all that said, I hope you enjoy my work, whether it be in eBook, paperback, hardback, wherever books are sold, or in large print which launches today exclusive to Amazon.
Today I level up from writer to author. Cheers to escapism, and happy reading! I leave you with my blurb, the promise of working towards an audio book, and news that I'm writing my second novel, one day at a time.
Progress doesn't sleep, and neither does a vampire. Facing homelessness, artist Lucy takes a job with global household brand Cross-Key & Co., entering a world where art meets the supernatural. One week in her charge Oda, a naive tree spirit inhabiting a notebook, goes missing along with company supplies. If not recovered she could lose her job, home, and wolfishly handsome flatmate. Lucy races to recover them in a journey leading her through mirror portals, and uncovering secrets of cosmic proportions, paranormal and Intergalactic peace is on the line. Amidst tangled relationships, chasing down an escaped vampire convict, and a web of family and inter species politics, Lucy discovers her own voice. But when the time comes to speak, will she be Little Red Riding Hood or the Red Queen?
Credits:
Thumbnail and ending image created free using canva.com
Music credit 1: ending theme – Adara Spence Music
Credit 2: Beloved - Sakura Girl https://soundcloud.com/sakuragirl_off...
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/3ji1zZc
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/omTgn4GQcKAMusic
Credit 3: Soon We'll Fly by Ghostrifter Official https://bit.ly/ghostrifter-sc
Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA
3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/35reep7
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/q2vomZqSJuE
