AUTHOR LOIS WINSTON'S MAKEOVER, PART 2

Last month I wrote a post about a makeover of a different kind, one that involved giving a facelift to some of my books as I prepared print editions of them. I started with my romantic suspense titles, one written under my own name—Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception—and two under my Emma Carlyle pen name—Lost in Manhattan and Someone to Watch Over Me. I’ve now completed my project with the conversion of my Emma Carlyle romances—Hooking Mr. Right and Finding Hope and the humorous women’s fiction, Four Uncles and a Wedding.

Below are the before and after covers. So what do you think?

And now that all the books are available in print, it’s time to get back to writing the next Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery and the next Empty Nest Mystery, both of which should be available the second half of this year.

Old Cover

Hooking Mr. Right

Can a butt-ugly alley cat named Cupid bring together two people driven apart by secrets and lies?

After writing a doctoral thesis that exposed fraud in the pop-psychology genre, thirty-two year old professor Althea Chandler has to sacrifice her professional integrity to save her family from financial disaster. She secretly becomes bestselling romance guru Dr. Trulee Lovejoy, a self-proclaimed expert on how to catch a man, even though Thea’s a miserable failure when it comes to relationships—especially those with the opposite sex.

New Cover

Burned by a failed marriage, Luke Bennett finds himself pursued by Dr. Lovejoy-toting women after a gossip columnist dubs him New York’s most eligible bachelor. When he at first mistakes Thea for one of the women out to snare him, sparks fly, but the two soon find themselves battling sparks of a less hostile nature, thanks in part to an alley cat named Cupid.

 Luke believes he’s finally found an honest woman. Unfortunately, Thea is anything but honest. She’s got more secrets than the CIA and a desperate gossip columnist out to expose her. Cupid definitely has his work cut out for him.

The print edition of Hooking Mr. Right also now includes the short story sequel Finding Mr. Right. For those of you who prefer ebooks, Finding Mr. Right is also now available for .99.

Hooking Mr. Right

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Finding Mr. Right

In this short story sequel to the award-winning Hooking Mr. Right by Lois Winston (writing as Emma Carlyle,) editor Grace Wainwright, has taken over the role of bestselling author and romance guru Dr. Trulee Lovejoy. Thea Chandler, the original Trulee, is now married to her Mr. Right and is a successful cookbook author. She and Grace host the top-rated Love Recipes cooking show. When producer Becket Delaney announces the first two shows in February will have a Valentine’s Day theme, Grace freaks out. The worst day of her life occurred on Valentine’s Day ten years ago, and she wants no reminders of it. Beck has his own reasons for hating the holiday, but the show must go on, and he absolutely refuses to deal with an uncooperative prima donna. When a citywide blackout traps him and Grace in his thirty-fourth floor office, their adversarial relationship really begins to heat up. Recipe included.

Finding Mr. Right

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Old Cover

Finding Hope

Hope Morgan was always the good girl, doing what her conservative parents expected: she gave up her dream of going to college, became a secretary right out of high school, and married the boy next door. When Hope is suddenly widowed, she finds the courage to pursue her own dreams. Twelve years later, after working full-time and going to school at night, she obtains her degree and is offered a position at a prestigious architectural firm.

New Cover

That’s when her long-exiled libido decides to resurface, and Hope finds herself falling head-over-heels for Ben Schaffer, her married boss. What Hope doesn’t realize is that Ben’s marriage is less than ideal. Within days of Hope starting her new job, Ben’s wife walks out on him and their three-year-old triplets–the same day the nanny lands in the hospital. When Ben can’t find a last-minute replacement, Hope agrees to step in as a temporary nanny–not the best decision she’s ever made, given her raging hormones.

Ben is fighting a battle with his own hormones, but an office romance is the last thing he needs or wants. However, he and Hope are no match for three very determined three-year-olds on a mission to find a happy ending.

Finding Hope

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Old Cover

Four Uncles and a Wedding

Polly Faith Harmony is the ultimate ecumenical love child. Born to former hippies turned millionaire entrepreneurs, she’s one part Jewish, one part Catholic, one part Episcopalian, and one part Unitarian—hence her name. Could have been worse. Her Flower Power parents might have named her Polly Esther.

Aside from her joke of a name, her great-uncles, one from each side of the family, are all members of the clergy, not to mention golfing buddies and best friends. To keep harmony in the Harmony household, Polly has grown up alternately attending all four houses of worship.

New Cover

When Polly’s feminist mother decides it’s about time her daughter settles down and starts providing her with grandchildren before her biological clock runs out, she enlists help from the four uncles. Polly and her friend Joni have penned The Top 10 Reasons to Call it Quits After the First Date, but Polly soon finds that thanks to her interfering relatives, the list is growing at an alarming rate. Worse yet, she learns that loving relatives on a mission will stop at nothing.

Four Uncles and a Wedding

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LOIS WINSTON ON A MAKEOVER OF A DIFFERENT KIND

Like most women, every so often I get the urge for a makeover. Usually this results in a new hairstyle or color. (We won’t talk about the disastrous perm from the late 1980’s! Suffice to say, I let it grow out as quickly as possible!)

However, lately, that urge has taken the form of new covers for some of my books. I’ve recently begun to release my Emma Carlyle ebooks and my previously out-of-print backlist romances in print as trade paperbacks. So, I though, what better time to give them a makeover?

I started with my three romantic suspense titles. Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception was originally published in 2007. 

original mass-market paperback cover

2012 ebook cover

You can see the new trade paperback and ebook cover below. Quite a difference, right? I think it much better represents the story and tone of the book, which Booklist called a “surprisingly dark and serious romance.”

Branding has become an essential part of marketing for authors. Although my three romantic suspense books are not connected as a series, I wanted them to tie together in some way because the tone and voice of all three books are similar—and quite different from my humorous amateur sleuth mysteries. Therefore, I kept the cityscape background and figures in the foreground for each of the books.

Someone to Watch Over Me had previously gone through a cover makeover. I kept the figures and added a Philadelphia cityscape as a backdrop. Lost in Manhattan originally had a New York City background and a figure in the foreground, but I changed those up to tie in better with the other cover makeovers.

Next up, my backlist and ebook romances. Stay tuned!

Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception

Life has delivered one sucker punch after another to Emma Wadsworth. As a matter of fact, you could say the poor little rich girl is the ultimate poster child for Money Can’t Buy Happiness — even if she is no longer a child.

Billionaire real estate stud Logan Crawford is as famous for his less-than-platinum reputation as he is his business empire. In thirty-eight years he’s never fallen in love, and that’s just fine with him—until he meets Emma.

But Emma’s not buying into Logan’s seductive ways. Well, maybe just a little, but she’s definitely going into the affair with her eyes wide open. She’s no fool. At least not any more. Her deceased husband saw to that. Besides, she knows Logan will catch the first jet out of Philadelphia once he learns her secrets.

Except things don’t go exactly as Emma has predicted, and when Philadelphia’s most beloved citizen become the city’s most notorious criminal, she needs to do a lot more than clear her name if she wants to save her budding romance with the billionaire hunk someone is willing to kill for.

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Someone to Watch Over Me

Dori Johnson is in hiding from the Russian Mafia. Six years ago she committed a series of felonies in order to create new identities for herself and her younger brother and sister. They’ve kept a low profile, living in fear of their lives ever since.

When Niles York, Dori’s boss, offers her the opportunity of a lifetime, she turns down the job, not wanting to risk discovery. However, her brother and sister convince her that after six years, she’s unrecognizable, and she can’t pass up such an opportunity. Reluctantly, Dori agrees to become the face and spokesperson for York’s new retail venture.

Jake Prentiss suspects Dori is hiding a secret, and he’s not going to let her jeopardize his friend’s business. As a former government operative, he calls in  some favors and starts digging into Dori’s past. What he finds has him convinced she’s out to sabotage York Enterprises. Too bad he’s falling for her.

Dori is falling in love with Jake, but she doesn’t trust him. He works for the government, and she’s a criminal. But then her life is threatened, and she has to make a decision that could either get her killed or put her behind bars for a very long time.

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Lost in Manhattan

One by one members of the Montgomery family have died in tragic accidents. Photographer Sarah Montgomery is the last surviving member of the aeronautics dynasty. After the death of her beloved grandfather, she accepts the fact that her husband never loved her and initiates divorce proceeding. On the way home from the lawyer’s office, Sarah is hit by a cab. Days later she awakens in the hospital and has no idea who she is.

Industrialist Trent Caldwell harbors guilt over his wife’s death. A passenger in the cab that struck Sarah, he now feels responsible for her injuries. When no one steps forth to identify the woman in the hospital, he arranges for Mrs. Kearn, his housekeeper, to care for her in his home. Seeing in Sarah someone who just might draw Trent out of the darkness he’s succumbed to since his wife’s death, Mrs. Kearn sets about playing matchmaker.

But the Montgomery family deaths weren’t accidents. Someone harbors a deadly secret and using skills perfected as a youthful IRA operative, has systematically eliminated the family out of a need for revenge. Realizing Sarah’s true identity, the assassin now has one more kill to make in order to fulfill a promise made long ago.

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BOOK CLUB FRIDAY -- GUEST AUTHOR JEAN HENRY MEAD

Jean Henry Mead is the author of 15 books, half of them novels. She’s also an award-winning photojournalist who served as a news, magazine and small press editor. Her Logan & Cafferty mystery/suspense series consists of A Village Shattered, Diary of Murder, and Murder on the Interstate. Her juvenile series, the Hamilton Kids’ mysteries, are Mystery of Spider Mountain and Ghost of Crimson Dawn. She also writes historicals; her first in the series, Escape, a Wyoming Historical Novel, will be followed by No Escape: The Sweetwater Tragedy. Her books, regardless of genre, are laced with humor and light romance. To read more about Jean and her books, visit her website. -- AP 

Rebirth of a Mystery Series

How would you react if your publisher died and orphaned your mystery series? Panic? Tears? Or would you follow the trend and republish the books yourself? Few publishers will consider a mystery series after the third novel, so I decided to establish my own publishing company.

I’m electronically challenged, but my husband learned to upload the files for both ebooks and print editions. And, because the books were previously published, there was little editing to do. It wasn’t long before we had seven books online as well as local stores interested in stocking them.

We have an unusual publishing website at  www.medallionbooks.com and plan to publish other writers’ work as well. Fortunately, I’ve served as an editor, and my husband is good at designing book covers. We’re both bibliophiles with a large home library, so our love of books keeps us motivated.

The next problem is how to promote our books. With so much competition from more than a million ebooks, and thousands more published each day; we need to find ways to make our books stand out. But how to do that? Too many blurbs on Facebook and other social media sites only turn readers away. So how do you let readers know about your books on a limited budget?

Besides appearing on great sites like Lois’s, I decided to take part in virtual book tours. I was asked to join the “Mystery We Write” Holiday Tour, which will run from November 25 until December 9. Fifteen mystery writers, including award-winning Tim Hallinan and Michael Orenduff, are taking part in the tour and we’ll be collectively giving away more than 60 mystery novels from our individual sites.

My own tour schedule is up at: http://jeansblogtour.blogspot.com/ (as well as the other writers’ sites) and I’ll be giving away 14 ebooks, one each day of the tour to visitors who leave comments and screen names. I’ll also draw three additional names at the conclusion of the tour for print copies of my mystery novels.

The best part of blog tours is hearing from readers who stop to say hello and comment about our books. Having someone say, “My husband grabbed your book before I had a chance to read it,” really makes a writer’s day—an entire week even. So I hope you’ll have a look at my tour schedule and choose a number of the tour sites to visit. There’s a good chance you’ll win a great mystery novel (or two) and enjoy what we all have to say.

Before I close, I’d like to ask you, the readers, how publishers attract your attention and what makes you decide to buy their books? I appreciate any comments you’d like to make.

Wishing you all the best holiday season ever!

Thanks for visiting with us today, Jean, and best of luck on your new publishing venture and blog tour. -- AP