Try an Amazon gift card! Amazon can send it via email. Fill in the email address of the recipient and Amazon will send it on the date YOU specify. Just click the link below and let Amazon take care of it for you!
Give an electronic Amazon gift card
Would you prefer a physical card with an enclosed gift card? Amazon can do that too! They offer card designs for many different occasions and for varying amounts:
So you’re more of a traditionalist! You have many options when it comes to getting a physical card with a gift card enclosed. Amazon offers card designs for many different occasions and for varying amounts. They can usually get it to you in ONE DAY:
I’m happy to help you with that! I’ll match the current price on Amazon for a print copy of any of my books.
Send me an email at SheridanJeaneAuthor@gmail.com and provide me the following information:
Your name
The email address to which I should send a PayPay invoice
Name of the person to whom the book should be dedicated
Shipping address (if outside the 48 contiguous states, I’ll have to add a shipping charge)
I’m sorry, but I don’t offer giftwrap at the moment, but feel free to ask me about it in your email. If I’m able to accommodate you, I will.
Since I’ll be responding to these requests personally, I might not be able to acommodate you quickly if I’m traveling or if I’m on a book deadline, so please check with me first if a two-week turnaround is too long.
For example, when I was first coming up with ideas for It Takes a Spy…, I read an article about a jewel heist in Cannes, France that took place in 2013, and that gave me the inspiration for the main conflict in my story.
It varies. As an author, I’m essentially a small-business owner. I love the days when I don’t have other tasks pulling me away from writing, and when I’m on a great roll, I can usually get a lot of writing done. I love those days when I can sit down at 7:30 am and write until 11:30 or so, and then focus on other tasks in the afternoon.
For each of my books, I do at least two more complete editing passes on my own before I send it off to my copy editor. (Sometimes I do five or six passes!) In my additional passes, I flesh out more of the details of my story and look for problems in my plot or the characterization. It’s hard to evaluate every single aspect of a book at once, so with each pass I try to focus on one thing. For example, I might focus on character arc, plot, strong hooks, solid sentence structure and strong metaphors, good use of setting, good hooks in each scene… sometimes I can do a couple at once, but I usually need to make multiple passes to get all of these right!
I also work closely with my cover artist when she creates my fabulous covers. We usually have quite a few iterations of the cover before we agree on a final version.
My website needs maintenance, and since my degree is in Computer Science, I feel obliged to do as much of that work as possble.
Then, of course, there are the marketing and promotion tasks involved in getting people to know about my books! I do Facebook parties, Facebook hops, blog posts, Tweets, and advertisements to promote my sales, releases, and appearances.
I also need to keep track of business finances, so I try to stay on top of that as much as possible.
I attend monthly meetings for Three Rivers Romance Writers (a Pittsburgh RWA chapter). I also attend the NEORWA chapter meetings most months. They meet in the Cleveland area, so it takes about two hours to drive there.
I take on line writers workshops to continue to improve as a writer. That’s key!
I work on developing new ideas for stories. Some even get turned into books!
I support other writers and try to answer questions they have. I do this mostly through my RWA chapter and writers’ forums.
Publishers don’t do as much for authors as they did back in the 1990’s. These days, it is up to each individual author to maintain their website, manage their social media connections, and promote their books. Publishers occasionally put books on sale and promote them through ads, but an author would be wise to do as much as possible to help (without duplicating anythign the publisher is doing). Unfortunately, huge book promotions tend to be reserved for bestselling authors like James Patterson and Nora Roberts… because they have such loyal fans!
It depends on the book. I can get a first draft of a shorter book done in about 45 days, but my second and third drafts each take about a month or so. Longer books take… longer! 🙂
I’ve also found that I can’t get much work done toward the end of November (Thanksgiving) or mid to late December (Christmas). June seems to be problematic for me as well, with end of the school-year events and family trips interfering with my regular writing schedule.
I love it when I get to write daily, but I TRY to take weekends off. All work and no play makes Jane a dull girl. I need to regularly recharge those batteries if I plan to keep writing for the rest of my life!
The list is a long one, and I’m afraid I might leave someone off! At the very least, I’ll mention:
Katharine Ashe, Madeline Hunter, Eloisa James, Courtney Milan, Tessa Dare, Christi Caldwell, Lisa Kleypas, Becky Lower, Tessa Dare, Victoria Roberts, Erica Ridley, Donna MacMeans, and Gwyn Cready.
Well, there’s always Nora! (Nora Roberts!) Then Miranda Liasson, AE Jones, Karen Marie Moning, Bella Andre, Barbara Freethy, (oh, my- so many!), Tonya Burrows, Sonali Dev, Jane Lynne Daniels, Mary Campisi, Kristi Avalon, Erin McCarthy, Heather Graham, I’M FORGETTING TOO MANY PEOPLE!
Of course not! Do you only watch one kind of movie? Eat one kind of food? I love variety! One of my favorite authors is Neil Gaiman. I happen to love science fiction and fantasy. I might even have to try my hand at one someday! I love mysteries, suspense novels, “hero’s journey” stories… lots of different things. I do tend to prefer books with happy-ish endings. (I get enough of unhappy endings by watching the news!)
