Yesterday I saw chatter that Harlequin is closing its Historical Romance line. The weakening of the historical romance category has been discussed for a while now – when I was at the Historical Novelist Society conference last year it seemed to be one of the topics that kept coming up. I’m not a romance novelist
Hot. I saw those words under a post showing the poster for the latest adaptation of Wuthering Heights, directed by Emerald Fennell, which opens on February 14. A lot of the discussion online has been focused on casting choices, anachronistic costume design and adaptational changes (like many other Wuthering Heights films, this version seems to
A few days ago, I had to pass on an invitation to a book festival in the United States. Normally, I love to travel and attend several festivals and conferences during the year. It’s a chance for me to promote my work, but also to meet fans and chat with colleagues. I was excited to
This Friday I received the news that Signal to Noise is being pulped, which in short means recycled. The cover is torn off, the paper is mixed with water and cleaned of ink and dried out. The resulting “pulp” can be used to make new products, such as toilet paper or more books. You might
Today I posted a reel to Instagram where I showed an issue of a women’s magazine from the 1950s, “Paquita.” The magazine might be of interest to fans of Mexican Gothic, as well as those curious about my upcoming novel, The Intrigue, about a con artist who browses lonely hearts ads looking for victims. The
How big is a big hit? Bertelsmann, which owns Penguin Random House, has provided an update on their third quarter sales. The press release discussing the numbers noted that Alchemised “sold more than 300,000 copies across formats in North America in its first week, making it one of the most successful adult debut novels of
Yesterday while people were talking about the Goodreads Awards and representation disparities (you can see my thoughts on that here) someone mentioned to me that the Goodreads Awards didn’t help writers anyway. They had been a nominee and saw no uptick in their sales due to their nomination. Same with me, I normally don’t see
Belle of the ball: do awards help sell books anyway? Read More »
The Goodreads Awards nominees have been announced and on social media there have been many complaints that the lists of books are not very diverse. To which I say: these awards are the true reflection of readers. But like the picture of Dorian Gray, it may be no pretty face we see. I’ll quickly mention
The Goodreads awards are our imperfect reflection Read More »
I recently I discussed how book sales across the board have been in a slump this year. Publishing’s summer sales slump continued in August, according to results from AAP’s most recent report. Therefore, you might not be surprised to know YA sales have also been decreasing on par with other categories. We’re currently in a
This is the second time in six months that a scammer posing as me has created a fake Facebook profile attempting to impersonate me. I’ve reported this and as a reminder all my official social channels can be accessed via my website. However, I want to quickly address the growing issue of scams in the
It’s almost Halloween so it’s time to discuss the most dreaded bogeyman: distribution issues. I’ve talked about this on Threads but I’m going to talk about it today once more because The Bewitching is backordered on Bookshop.org. Again. My book is popular but there are no copies to sell. So, here’s a brief explanation of
On Threads I’ve noticed a high number of self-published authors complaining about lower book sales and blaming the phenomenon on an Amazon boycott. This is odd, because first of all there is no Amazon boycott. A boycott is collective and organized social protest practice. Even if some people dislike Amazon, it does not mean a
I was going to try to show a newspaper for proof of life, but who gets newspapers these days? Anyway, it’s December 31, 2024 and there has been a scammer going around Facebook pretending to be me and trying to join writer groups. So this is a reminder: 1. All my official social media channels
The American cover for The Bewitching has now been revealed. Cover art by Loles Romero. Release date is July 15, 2025. A graduate student working on her thesis in the 1990s, an aspiring writer attending a women’s college during the Great Depression, and a farmer’s daughter growing up in the mountains of Hidalgo at the dawn of the 20th
I’ll be promoting the launch of my latest novel, The Seventh Veil of Salome, this August and visiting Seattle, Dallas and NY. Links and more information below:
Well, it can now be revealed: The Seventh Veil of Salome will be out July 2024. This is not a genre novel, it’s a historical drama set in Hollywood, following three different point of view characters all tied to the production of a movie inspired by the Biblical story of Salome. The official description is:
