News from Frances Ellen, author of The Aster Prequel Trilogy, May 2022

Published: Fri, 05/20/22

Hi , and welcome to my newsletter.

In this edition there is the first ever reveal of the cover of From Fury Reborn, an open invitation to join my review team, insights and updates from my writing life and day job, as well as news of free fantasy e-book giveaways. It finishes off with a question about how you find new authors and books.

I hope you enjoy reading this email.

Thank you for being part of my publishing experience❤️

Best wishes

Frances

The Reveal

Cover reveal - From Fury Reborn

I'm really excited to share with you the cover of the first in the Aster Original Series. The brief was to come up with a magical "band", with a central sycamore leaf icon and accompanying green glow of the Magic of Flora. Designer GraphicSoul nailed the brief, and, when they produced additional covers with the colours of some of the other Aster Magic, I was sold. I so ❤️the O's in the title. Even the spine is amazing! I hope you like the final design as much as I do. (Please forgive the quality of the image reproduced below, it doesn't do GraphicSoul's work full justice.)

You can find out more about GraphicSoul at https://www.graphicsoulart.com and make contact via dragana@graphicsoulart.com

Join My ARC Team?

An open invitation

If reviews are the lifeblood driving a book's success, reviewers are the pumping heart - does that analogy work? My point is, reviewers are wonderful, generous people who make an enormous difference to, especially, indie self-publishing authors like me. I am so grateful for everyone who has spent their precious time writing and posting a review of my books, helping other readers decide whether or not to get to know and follow the adventures of the Asters. Soon I will have an ARC version of From Fury Reborn ready for reviewing.

Would you like to be one of the first to read FFR and leave an honest review? If its a yes from you, just reply to this email and I'll be in touch with more details.

A Book's Journey

From Word to ePub file

I write in Word, but I format my books using the Reedsy book building and editing programme. Its really quick and simple to use and.... it's free! It's true you can now build your book direct in Amazon's KDP, also for free, however, I like that I can make multiple versions and adjustments in a safe environment - I'm convinced I'll do something stupid like press the wrong button on KDP and suddenly launch a book mid-3rd round edit. So for instance, I produced a custom-ARC version of my novellas that I could send direct to my reviewers. And I send the mobi version direct to my kindle to see how it looks on that device - great for catching those last editing and formatting issues.

I am starting to build From Fury Reborn in the Reedsy programme. I'm also planning to put the entire Prequel Trilogy in 1 box set collection - as soon as I figure out how to format 3 separate Table of Contents within a master Table of Contents. There's a trick to doing it in Word first, apparently. If you've any experience or ideas, I'd love to hear from you.

The Day Job (for now?)

If you've come across my Author Bio you will know that I train guide dogs for the blind. I recently had the privilege of joining an instructor who was working with a client to onboard their second guide dog, and it was a dog whose first 2-months of his 6-month training I did! I would love to show you an image of Gijs, my first dog to make the big step up to a true working professional, but unfortunately he is sponsored - yes, there are image rights attached to sponsoring these special dogs!! So instead here is a picture of my latest love, a big black prince going by the wonderful name of Loki - do you see any resemblance?

Discover New Fantasy Reads

To find new readers for my books I work with fellow (usually also indie) authors to promote our books to each other’s email list. We offer an e copy of a book, novella or custom story for free on sign-up to our newsletters, to help the reader decide if they want to keep following the author. Currently I am offering A Queen To Come.
This time I am sharing three new offers you may like, with themes of fantasy realms, YA and NA in general, and fantasy mayhem and magic (without spice).

Interested? Just click on the images below to get to the web site, browse through the free books on offer, and take a punt. And feel free to share the link to friends and groups you know who may also be interested.

Before You Leave.....

I have recently been following a course on setting up Amazon Ads. I also promote my books through my sites on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. It's not always possible to track where a sale comes from and I often wonder if one site is better than the other to find new readers for my books.

I'd love to know how you find out about new authors and books. Would you spare a few moments of your time to email back about this?

If you know of someone who you think will be interested to follow my publishing journey with the Asters, please feel free to forward them to my newsletter sign-up page on BookFunnel, StoryOrigin, or MyBookCave, or to the sign-up form on my website.

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