With Dark Child in the world, a rant about obsessive checking of rankings and call for reviewers - yes that means YOU!

 Hello. My name is Adina. It's been almost three months since my last drink blog post.

Wow, this cover actually matches the background colour on my blog. Pure coincidence.

It's finally happened. I've crossed over to the other side. The 'published' side. I'm starting to think of it as the Dark side. Because the last few months have been mad. Manic. And also, inevitably, filled with huge amounts of frivolous time wasting and not much actual writing. And it kind of goes without saying seeing as this is my first post since early February that I haven't been blogging either. Or visiting any of you. :-( Most of this I blame on the sustained state of heightened nerves arising from the fact that I've had four books released in four months, with another two releases still to go next month. They're all actually the same book: Dark Child. But as it's been released as a digital serial, one new episode has come out each month, each attended by a flurry of tweets on Twitter, and updates on Facebook, and hours and hours (oh, let's be honest, days and DAYS) wasted obsessively checking sales ranks and figures on Amazon and the iBookstore. Why did nobody tell me it'd be like this? Actually, they probably did, but back then I wasn't listening. I just wanted to be published!

Some free reads for you to celebrate Dark Child release day

image by Evgeni Dinev, freedigitalphotos.net

Most people know that book names are often changed by publishers, for whatever reason. My debut novel is being released today under the name Dark Child, which I love, as originally that was the name I'd given the planned series - though the first book had a different title.

My working title for the first book was Birthed by Moonlight, and not only did that name get cut but so did the original prologue that told the story of my main character's extraordinary birth. Seeing as today is a birth of another kind, the birth of Episode One of my first novel into the world, it seems appropriate to share Kat's 'birth' story with you. I've posted it in the 'Extras' section on my website.

You can also read a free sample from the beginning of Dark Child at my publisher's website if you go here. This is a longer sample than the one up at Amazon!

Enjoy. :-)

So, do you prefer to try before you buy? Are you a free sample reader?

The Next Big Thing

Well, I've been tagged by the lovely and talented Wai Chim (from my writers' group), author of Chook Chook: Mei's Secret Pets, a children's book released 2012 through University of Queensland Press. And of course I'm running late with my post which was supposed to be exactly a week after hers. Thank goodness Blogger lets you backdate posts. No one will ever know, right? ;-)

The Next Big Thing is an authorly chain-post of sorts; where we each share a little about a current work in progress, and then pass the baton on to other writers to do the same a week later. I have several projects at various stages of completion, so for this I'm going to pick one of them at random to talk about. It might be some time before I actually finish it though!