Stolen Book Update: Of Honor and Love

Hello, everyone! I'm in a much better mood as I write this. My free book, Of Honor and Love, that was stolen and posted for sale by someone without my authorization, was removed from sale at Amazon within hours of me contacting Amazon's Security, Author Central, and Copyright Divisons. Woo hoo!

I really have to give praise to Amazon. Everyone I communicated with took this matter very seriously. Each one was professional, courteous, and they worked quickly to get this situation resolved and have the book taken down. My thanks goes out to Amazon for the wonderful service they provided!

Unfortunately, it seems this person had also stolen more works from the M/M Romance Group on Goodreads and listed them for sale on Amazon. The thief posted all the anthologies from the Don't Read in the Closest event in 2011 and had them for sale without the group's or authors' permission. I also reported the anthologies, along with several other people, and the books have since been removed.

If you're an author who has written for one of the M/M Romance Group's events, I encourage you, please check Amazon for your work and the anthologies it was featured in to ensure your efforts and hard work aren't being stolen and profited from. In this age of ebooks, it's hard to prevent things such as this from happening, but as this experience has shown, the thieves can be stopped.

It's really a despicable thing, to steal the hard work of authors and the money of readers. The nerve of this person amazes me! However, there was a bright point in this and that was seeing the unity of authors and readers working together to spread the word on these thefts. I truly believe that it was thanks to the many retweets on Twitter, sharing on Facebook, review posting on Amazon and reporting to them, "liking" and discussions on Goodreads, that helped bring this situation to Amazon's attention. Many, many people were speaking and sharing the truth against this thief. And the good guys have won, because the books have been removed :-) From me personally regarding Of Honor and Love, my deepest thanks and gratitude goes out to everyone who helped get the word out to not buy the book and that it was stolen. Your help and support means the world and beyond to me. Thank you, thank you, thank you!  

S.J. Writing Update

Hey, everyone!  I thought it was about time I gave you all an update on what projects I'm working on and what's up for release, especially since I have a little more of an idea of things and what direction I'm heading with stories this year since my last update.  There are currently three main projects I have in the works at the moment, and they are:

1.) NATURAL INSTINCTS - An m/m vampire erotic romance novel.  This one is finished and we're going to be working on edits with it this month.  Depending on how fast I can work, there's a chance it could be releasing this February, early March at the latest, and it'll be published at MLR Press.

2.) BLACK HEART DOWN - This is another m/m rock star novel.  Those who have read NO FEAR might recognize BHD's name ;-)  I have a rough draft finished on it, and have gone through a couple rounds of polishing, but there's still more work to do before I officially hand it in.  I'm hoping for it to release before summer, but that wicked time thing and not having enough of it always comes into play.  It'll also be published at MLR Press.

3.) HEARTSTRINGS - An m/m contemporary erotic romance about a classical violinist and a rock drummer.  And nope, sorry, the drummer isn't Conquest's Brad.  The drummer is from a new band no one's met yet.  I'm in the process of writing this one at the moment and don't even have a finished draft yet, so I can't even begin to predict a release for it.

While those are the three main projects occupying my time, I do have many more planned for down the road.  Two ideas I have that I'd like to at least start writing this year are a longer work featuring Brandon Alexander and Shunichi Miyamoto from the Conquest series, and an m/m samurai historical.  And I haven't forgotten about Conquest's Brad.  I wouldn't mind fitting in working on a story with him leading, too.  I also have hopes of writing a sequel to NATURAL INSTINCTS, which could get moved up in the list if my vampires are well received by everyone.

I can't thank you all enough for the support you give me and I hope everything sounds good!  I'll continue to try my hardest and put out the best work I'm capable of delivering for all of you!

What has S.J. been up to?

It hit me last night that for all the posts I've put up since launching this blog, I haven't really given an update about what I'm working on.  I get bad author points for that!  Sorry!  So, let me try and catch everyone up with what's been going on in my little writing world :-)

For the past couple weeks I've been working on a novella, tentatively titled FINDING A DREAM, and just last night, my awesome editor sent the first round of edits on it back to me.  I'm really excited about this story because if things go the way I'm hoping, something special might be getting done with my royalties for it, along with my editor's.  I'm going to hold off on saying what until things are finalized, but I will say the story involves a couple characters from the Conquest series, Brandon Alexander and Shunichi Miyamoto. 

And my upcoming m/m vampire erotic romance novel, NATURAL INSTINCTS, is also finished and will be going into edits in the next few weeks.  We're thinking maybe a January-ish release for its release, but please don't hold me to that.  The holidays could slow me down with working on edits when I get them, but I'll definitely try my best to get them done as fast as I can!

Let's see, what else...  Oh yeah, more rockers.  Those who have read NO FEAR and KEYS TO LOVE might remember the band Black Heart Down.  I have a rough draft finished for their story, centered around two band members in particular.  It's another novel length work, and its tentative title is BLACK HEART DOWN, because you know, I'm creative like that ;-)  But BHD it slated for after the vampires, so probably looking at the first quarter of 2011 for those boys to take the stage.

Well, I think that's about it for all the immediate projects I've got in the works.  Here's hoping they all sound good and readable to everyone!