I have been working on a HUGE (3’x4′) painting. Since I’m at a spot where I don’t know what to do next, I’m taking a break to do some book marketing.
The second book in the Hope and Horses series is on the final round of edits and they are very near complete. I am getting excited! Well, more excited!
Book one, Only My Horses Know, came out a few years ago. We decided that the cover needed to be rebranded for consistency with the next two books, and to allow for a larger and bolder title font. I liked “shuffle” because in this story, the main character deals with her mother’s mental illness which keeps them shuffling between good days and bad days. She also shuffles between having to be the responsible adult in the family and being a carefree pre-teen. The horses they train shuffle about as horses do, and one horse even shuffles between being calm and being afraid. More to come on this decision in the publisher’s newsletter, but here is the result:
What are your thoughts on the new title and cover? Please leave a comment!
I have a big favor to ask you. Amazon and Goodreads websites did not carry over the reviews from the first title, so now my poor book has zero ratings! I would appreciate it so much if you could take a minute to post a review. If you have already reviewed the book, you can still access Only My Horses Know to simply copy your review to paste it into a new review for Shuffle. If you have read it but not reviewed it, please take a minute to write a review or give me some stars. Amazon requires that you have made a certain dollar amount of purchases to be able to post reviews, so if that doesn’t work for you, please use Goodreads.com. All you need is to create a simple account there. Or, even better, do both!
You may notice that Amazon has Shuffle categorized as young adult. This will soon be corrected to middle-grade since this story is geared more towards tween aged readers.
My first goal is to hit 50 reviews since I read it triggers Amazon to give the book more visibility. So come on 50!! Your support means the world to me, and I would hate to lose those first wonderful reviews. Plus, if you could share this post, I may get new readers which would be super. Here are the links to Amazon and Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/208828802-shuffle
Thank you, thank you!
Kidsillio 