A.J. Maguire

Category: Publishing

  • A REAL Summer Reading List – 2025

    In response to the Chicago Sun Times debacle where they have printed an AI generated list of books for Summer Reading, which includes books that DO NOT exist, I thought I would be a little cheeky and send out a REAL Summer Reading List.

    Or at least, MY Summer Reading List, which is curated by my personal tastes and some of them are literally waiting on my TBR pile. I lean heavily Fantasy / Romantasy / and Science Fiction in my reading.

    FIRST UP – Broken Souls and Bones by LJ Andrews.

    This is for my Romantasy friends. It is a happy blend of Vikings and Magic following Roark Ashwood and Lyra Bien and you can bet it has all the yummy Romantasy elements we open these books to find.

    You can check it out HERE

    SECOND – A Taste for Lies by LC Whitehouse

    I devoured this book in a day and a half. It is new and I enjoyed the world the author built. This is also a Romantasy (hey, I like what I like) but its pacing alone is impeccable and the characters on the page were absolutely vibrant.

    You can check it out HERE

    THIRD – Litany for a Broken World by LJ Cohen

    Admittedly, this one is on my TBR. I have enjoyed this author before, particularly her novel Future Tense and the amazing Halcyone Space Series, so I am excited to see what loveliness is in store for me with her newest novel.

    You can check it out HERE

    FOURTH – The Maya Bust (Boneguard 4) by E. Chris Ambrose

    Again, this is from my TBR pile and now that I’m looking I see I have SO MANY to catch up on with the Boneguard series. I loved Indiana Jones when I was growing up, so of course I’m going to love Grant Casey and the thrillers that Ambrose writes. We get history and action and a whole lot of fun in these novels.

    You can check out the Boneguard series HERE

    FIFTH – The Crimson Moth series by Kristen Circcarelli

    I read the first novel, Heartless Hunter, and love the mix of magic and Scarlett Pimpernel that was presented, so its second book, Rebel Witch, is patiently waiting for its turn on my TBR pile. I’m putting them both on here because, if you haven’t read the first one then you’re seriously missing out.

    You can check them out HERE

    Actually, now that I’m looking at my TBR pile it is starting to grow teeth and I fear for my life. I have a lot of reading to do!

    But hey, Chicago Sun Times… There are at least 5 actual, real life novels by actual real life people you could have put in your list instead of consulting a robot. Please hear the creatives in the room when we say that Art, and the consumption of Art, is a purely HUMAN experience. Stop trying to cut the humanity out of it.

    (P.S. My own novel, Blood of the Witch Heir, debuts in June, so it could ALSO count as a Summer Reading Book. If, you know, you like fantasy. And romance. And witches kicking some serious butt.)

  • Revising Old Work – Blood of the Witch Heir

    Recently I had the publishing rights to several of my novels returned to me. This was a strategic decision made due to the original publisher selling itself to another site, which I felt wasn’t a great fit for my work.

    Before I did this, I reached out to Amazon to make sure there wouldn’t be any copywrite issues once the reversions were done and exactly what I was allowed to do with the work once it was mine to publish again. Things like if I wanted to change the title (which I did) and if I should put a notice in the front of the novel letting readers know that this is a Re-Release.

    The answer to both those questions was yes, I could change the title but it would be like releasing a whole new book so the reviews I have on the original won’t be transferable. And yes, I can put a notice in the beginning pages letting people know so they aren’t shouting at me that I stole someone else’s work. (Difficult to do there, it’s still the same author name.)

    Due to contracts and all that, the things that I COULD NOT use from my original publication was the cover art and the editing. The Publishing House paid for the editor to this work originally, and thus owned the rights to that version.

    This was fine. I have grown enough in my craft that I felt confident I could take the book to the next level.

    That said…

    Revisiting old work is hard.

    Mega hard.

    Tooth pulling hard.

    It hurts to see what I put out into the world. Not only have I grown as a writer, I have grown as a person too. Things that I didn’t blink twice at before have been unpacked and rewritten. The themes at the core of the book revolving around trust and independence and how the two have to learn in live in harmony are being highlighted better.

    On the line-by-line level, the narrative has been given a major overhaul.

    But more than that, the characters are being given the chance to breathe more. Elsie Varene Delgora is as sharp as ever, and Dorian Feverrette remains my favorite roguish nobleman. Their story is one of tragedy and triumph, despair and love, and I sincerely hope that readers walk away from it knowing that no matter how dark the path they have traveled, joy and happiness can still be achieved if we’re willing to open ourselves to it.

  • Release Day – Nora and the Siren Song

    Release Day – Nora and the Siren Song

    Hurray!

    We made it!

    Today Nora and the Siren Song has officially been released, and I am so excited for people to get to read it. Nora’s story has grown, and so has her character. I am neck-deep in drafting the fourth and final book for her series, which is due to release in October, so fans of her story will be happy to know that by the end of this year, they will have the WHOLE THING.

    No more waiting for another installment.

    No more cliffhangers. (cough, ahem, sorry/not sorry)

    Nora’s story has been a pure joy to write and I sincerely hope all of you have enjoyed it as much as I have. To celebrate this newest release, here are all of the pretty promotional things I’ve shoved on Instagram/Threads/X/FB.

    Because using them all just ONCE after spending 2 hours creating them feels like a waste and I want my money’s worth of Canva now that they raised their prices. Again.

  • Embracing the Pantser In Me

    In just 7 days, Nora and the Siren Song will be available to the world. Hurray! Throw confetti!

    Which means I’ve officially been alerted that I have 48 hours to make certain all those files are the right files and that I don’t have any further changes I want to make to the book. Which, honestly, induces a mild panic attack and forces me to re-read everything.

    Even though I have literally read this book over a dozen times from first draft to finished product.

    Nora has come a long way since her inception.

    I first got the idea for her books from a conversation on social media where myself and another author were fangirling over the show Lucifer. We both found it deeply amusing that Lucifer had a therapist in the show, and the conversation stretched to… What if all these paranormal romances we read about with vampires and werewolves and other said shifters/magic user suddenly had to go to couples therapy?

    What would that therapists life look like?

    Enter Nora Grayson, an empathic wizard living in Boston whose private home study sees couples from the typical vampires and elves, to the more exotic creatures hiding in plain sight of humanity.

    I made her an empath for two reasons.

    First, I love Deanna Troi from Star Trek the Next Generation. You can say what you want about me being a Trekkie or whatever, I really don’t mind. Star Trek was my mother’s favorite show when I was growing up, so I come by my geekery honestly.

    Second, because I am an empathetic person myself and I feel like this trait isn’t given center stage a lot. The ability to listen and identify the emotional state of the people around you, and then genuinely understand, feels like a skill that is undervalued in the world today.

    We’re too busy.

    We have our own problems.

    Or worse, we’re scared of people.

    I mean, who wouldn’t be given what we see plastered over the news?

    I digress.

    Nora’s first book, Nora and the Werewolf Wedding has a simple design. It’s basically Clue, but with magic and werewolves. And yes, I learned to embrace my Pantser in that book.

    Or, well, this whole series.

    Don’t know what a Pantser is?

    A Pantser is someone who writes without an outline. There is a vague idea – in this case, empathic wizard stuck negotiating a socialite wedding where at least one of the guests is murdered – and you build from there.

    Which means literally everything that happened in that first book came as a surprise.

    True story, I honestly thought Derrick’s grandfather would be the big bad guy on the page. Spoilers! He isn’t.

    There are pros and cons to embracing the Pantser side of my muse.

    First, I’ve had a blast writing. That’s a huge PRO. I sit at the computer, stare out the window for a little as the scene starts to show itself, and then the narrative tends to flow. (Assuming I’m not interrupted. Interruptions are a part of life. I do have pets, a teenage son, a husband, and general biological needs like eating.)

    However, that PRO is often checked by the CON where I literally had to build Fairy from the ground up whilst on the go. I have a handwritten notebook with all of my world building notes, many of which required that I flesh out the rules during the editing process of the book.

    I mention this as a CON because I know the world is bigger than what has been displayed on the pages and I feel like I can do better.

    Another PRO is that I am genuinely surprised by the endings when I get there. Or… things like the surprise wedding in Book 2, which is still one of my favorite moments.

    Writing this way has made it feel like this is Nora’s story and she is telling it, first to me, and then to the rest of the world. All my other books, where outlines have been heavily utilized, I was directing things more than the characters on the page.

    Sure, Jorry and Trenna both had a huge say in what happened in their stories, but it was still ME telling those stories.

    Maybe one day I’ll go back and revise their books from this new, Pantser-loving lens, but don’t hold your breath for it. Nora’s final book is still in the works. It will be out in October of this year. And I have several others novels in various stages of complete or near-to-complete that will get to see publication first.

    In the meantime, here is me, embracing my Pantser. It’s difficult, but apparently well worth the editing time I have to spend after that first draft is done.

    Nora and the Siren Song will be available on April 8th!

  • LibGen, Meta, & Me

    This week has been illuminating.

    We of the Indie Community read the recent Atlantic article and tested our names in the LibGen search bar and most of us are on there. For a quick run down, Meta used LibGen in order to download many, many, MANY books and feed those books into its AI system known as Llama. To train that AI on how to write in an engaging manner.

    Yes, it has the Nora Grayson series on there too. Not the third book, as it hasn’t reached shelves yet, but the first two are in there. I’d show you the screen shot but it’s not the best quality. You can test it out yourself at the link provided if you don’t believe me.

    So, what is LibGen?

    Library Genesis, or LibGen for short, calls itself a shadow library.

    In short, it is a pirate site. It takes data files (aka eBooks) and offers them out for free. I know a lot of people decried Amazon for taking away the ability to download eBooks onto their computers because they think they should own the book and be able to access it on any device they want but…

    BUT this is how pirate sites get our work. And no, letting someone borrow your personal copy, or even giving it away to whomever you want, isn’t the same for an eBook because an eBook file can be copied. It can be copied INFINITELY. So I support Amazon’s move here. Because it protects ME. And maybe my books wouldn’t be on these sites if those protections had been in place from the beginning.

    Why does this matter? Don’t I let real libraries have my books to loan out? Don’t I leave physical copies of my book in random places sometimes so that someone might pick it up?

    Well, it matters on two fronts.

    First and foremost, people who have my physical copies can’t download the content into an AI system so that it can learn how to write in an engaging manner. Yes, we know AI is here and it’s not going anywhere. The technology will continue to grow no matter how hard we kick and scream and scoff at it, but that does not mean we want to help it grow. And we most certainly do not want our work stolen in order to feed that machine.

    Second, pirated eBooks don’t just steal royalties from the author, they steal our ability to be seen in the marketplace. Algorithms work based on engagement. The more people click on my books, the more that algorithm shares those same books with new potential readers. The more people who SEE, the more likely it is for someone else to click on the book and investigate.

    So it does matter. Because it directly affects my ability to reach new readers.

    Before you ask, there are already lawsuits in progress regarding this. If you are an author and this is the first you’re hearing about this (unlikely, the rage is everywhere at this point) then you will want to take a look at the Author’s Guild. They have a lot of information and even a form letter you can sign if you find your books on the LibGen site.

    For those of you who read my Blog and are NOT authors, but you want to help support us, the easiest and best way to support your favorite authors has not changed.

    1. Buy their books – yes, even when on sale for free on Amazon, that algorithm helps boost us, so don’t be ashamed if you get the novels for free that way.
    2. Tell people about the books you love.
    3. Review the books on Goodreads and Amazon and Barnes & Noble, if you have the time. We all know that can be a hassle. Just clicking on the Star rating will do. I promise.
    4. Remember that you, as a Reader, are amazing. We love you. We are here directly BECAUSE of you, and your thoughts and support mean the world to us.

  • Boycotts, Kindle Unlimited, & Indie Authors

    Why yes, we have another controversy sweeping through the internet. It’s all over my social media feeds and still going strong. Because this actually does affect me as an Indie Author with titles on Kindle Unlimited, I’m going to go ahead and comment on it.

    Many of my dedicated readers are not writers and therefore do not have insider knowledge of how this all works. Sure, they hear snippets where they start to get outraged at how they perceive authors are treated on various platforms and, historically, things haven’t been great for us.

    However…

    For Kindle Unlimited in particular, I can tell you that I have made a decent percentage from having my titles on there. Enough of a percentage that it’s worth it to me to keep the titles on that platform – the current boycott against Amazon notwithstanding.

    I imagine once the boycott is over, we will see an uptick in people reading on KU again. Or at least I sincerely hope we do.

    The truth is, Authors have always had the short end of the stick in publishing. The BIG publishers in traditional publishing get the largest slice of the pie regardless of any advances they may hand out to their authors. It’s a business. You’re getting your name under their imprint, which they have worked hard to gatekeep in such a way that readers who frequent their titles trust that they are buying a quality product.

    That’s part of the incentive for going Traditional. You get the stamp of authority that says your work is of the quality that these professionals hold. Notice I say PART of the incentive. The marketing budget they can offer is another one, and if we’re really honest, the rise of Indie Publishing has made it so that most people know they don’t actually need that imprint’s stamp of approval to put out a quality book.

    Many Readers are catching onto this fact too.

    This is where Kindle Unlimited comes in. Readers are able to access millions of books for a set price every month, so they are more willing to give an unknown Indie Author a chance. Yes, sometimes they find a stinker that didn’t take the time to research properly, didn’t hire an editor, and (these days) maybe even used AI to help ‘craft’ the story.

    Brief Sidebar: Please don’t support AI created stories.

    For all its faults and business practices that make people cringe, at the end of the day KU has become a space where Readers can take a chance on an independent author that they otherwise would not have. For a lot of us, that chance is all we need. Die-Hard fans are made in the KU publishing space.

    Is the pricing fair to authors who publishers there?

    I mean… let’s point again at literally every other publishing outlet on the planet and recognize that the authors are almost always on the short end of the stick. With KU, at least we’re getting paid regularly for people flipping through the book. Even if a Reader puts the book down because they don’t like it, the chance was taken and we get a little money for creating something.

    Now we come to the argument of ‘going wide’ with publishing.

    This is where the author puts their books out through many sites and not just Amazon. Places like Smashwords, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble are all viable outlets for selling books and have their doors open to Independent Authors. You absolutely can ‘go wide’ and have your books available on Amazon Kindle at the same time, you just can’t have them in the KU pool.

    I have books that I published wide, and books that I published to Amazon KU. The bottom line is, I make more money focused on Amazon KU. Don’t ask me why. Don’t ask me how their algorithm works. Because I honestly don’t know. All I know is, KU works.

    Which brings me to the current boycott.

    I understand standing up for what you believe in. I’m an author. 90% of the stories we tell are all about struggling against the Giants of the world to demand the right to not only exist, but live happy and free.

    So, you do you.

    But please do it with your eyes open. If you’re doing it because you feel the authors aren’t being treated fairly, I’m afraid that’s just how the cookie crumbles in this business. Aside from buying the book directly from us, we’re always going to get the short end of the stick.

    If you’re doing it for all the other business practices you disagree with, then hey, my proverbial hat is off to you. The lack of sales for a week is a small sacrifice I can make toward your cause as well, and I’m happy to make it.

    I like to fight Giants too.

  • Countdown to Siren Songs!

    As of today, we have 66 days before Nora and the Siren Song hits the virtual shelves.

    I am so very excited for everyone to get a chance to read the next step in Nora’s journey. The early reviews have been excellent. You can check them out on Goodreads if you don’t believe me. Or Bookbub, if you would rather.

    I know there are several other review sites out there, but Goodreads still tends to garner the most reviews and ratings for me.

    So what is this new adventure about?

    Well, it’s a romance.

    As in, the other books the romance tends to hide in the background, but in this next volume it takes center stage. I know this might annoy some people who prefer their romances in the light version, but Nora is growing and as such, she has reached a point of crisis where she must confront what she truly wants out of life.

    Which includes knowing what she wants out of a partner.

    I thoroughly enjoyed writing this book. It is a huge journey for Nora, not only because she must come to some decisions about who she is and what she wants, but because the world around her is getting far more dangerous.

    I can’t say much more than that without spoiling the book for you, so I will leave you with the current Book Blurb (subject to change between now and Publication Date.)

    Nora Grayson never meant to be a criminal.

    Raised by the very people who murdered her parents, Nora’s memory has been shrouded by spell-work and heavy drugs. Sensing that something terrible is in the works, Nora is desperate to uncover the truth of what her caretakers forced her to do, but there are other powers at play both Earthside and in Fairy. When the Vampire Court demands Nora be shackled from her power, she and Constable Elliot Cade must flee. Her only hope rests with the last known Great Wizard, Lady Helle, but reaching the wizard’s tower proves more difficult than either of them imagined.

    Boxed in on all sides, ancient rivalries rush to the surface, and the ocean powers Cade has been hiding from set out to prove that there is nothing more treacherous than the sea in a storm. With options and allies dwindling, and the wizard’s tower far out of reach, Nora faces an impossible choice: clear her own name or save the man she loves.

    Pre-Order Here!

  • Thoughts on Indie Publishing – 2024 Edition

    We are preparing to close out the year on 2024. I am preparing my end-of-year summary and planning ahead for 2025, but in the midst of this preparation comes some larger conversations going on in the publishing world right now.

    I already touched on a couple of the BookTok controversies that I spotted in a previous post but some other aspects of the conversation have been nagging at me and I am going to take my, admittedly quite small, blog here and unpack them a bit.

    First, let us admit that Indie Publishing has become a massive money-maker for quite a few people, and quite often these are NOT the writer. And no, I am not talking about Vanity Presses. Those still exist, of course, and you should avoid them. Suffice, if the publishing house requires you to pay money to get that book onto shelves, then you should walk away.

    You can quite literally go into debt to publish a book and never see that money fully returned. From editors to cover artists to marketing, we funnel money out to see this work put into the world because – for me anyway – it is my craft and I love telling stories.

    I mention this because I have seen an alarming influx of emails and DM’s on various social media sites targeting me for services. I am promised X amount of people will see their marketing posts if I pay them Y amount of dollars. I am guaranteed reviews on Amazon. I am told, for the low price of five-hundred-bucks, I can get my manuscript edited and professionally formatted.

    Given that five-hundred-dollars is actually on the extreme low-end for a professional editor, please hear me when I say that it feels like we have come to a place where only the extremely privileged can truly move forward in this business. Sure, anybody can make a social media account of their choice and start throwing themselves out there, but the chances of that truly making an impact are so slim it’s painful. AND, let us be honest, if that person hasn’t edited their work a dozen times over and hired an editor… Well. It’s dead on arrival, really.

    So where does this leave us?

    I promise I am not all doom and gloom here. I’m not throwing in the towel or anything like that. I am merely expressing some displeasure at all the noise, really. For those of you professional editors/ cover artists/ vocal artists out there trying to make a living in this business too, I’m afraid your voices are being swallowed up. My kneejerk reaction any time I get a new email or DM is to cast some serious salt and ignore it, which isn’t terribly fair to all of you and I know it.

    The question comes down to… how do we cut out all the noise?

    For me, I use Writer Beware a lot. Is there anyone who has something else they use? If so, I would love to learn of it.

  • Novel News – September 2024

    For those who may check my Amazon account you might have noticed that Witch-Born and Deviation are no longer available in Kindle. Long story short, something went down between the publisher and Amazon and they are no longer able to sell any of their books on Amazon’s site. There are paperback copies still available on the site, but insofar as I understand it, any purchases made from this point out are not going to be reflected in royalties.

    Leastwise, that’s what the publisher announced when they sent the email.

    I don’t know why. I don’t know what’s going on over there. To be frank, I had already contacted this publisher to request a termination of the contracts so that I could get the publishing rights back to all books under their label. They were very professional and agreed to the termination and we had set things up to be official in February 2025.

    In the meantime, I have been going through a brand new edit of Witch-Born that I intend to release in the Spring. This includes new cover art and, after much deliberation on my part, a whole new title.

    For funsies, it’s good to know that titles are not really under copywrite. I did not know this until recently, but there you have it.

    I digress.

    The current circumstances that the publisher finds themselves in with Amazon has pushed the timetable up for announcements and what have you. I hadn’t intended to announce the switch until January, with a publication release in May or June . Because this is a re-release, I felt it would not overshadow Nora and the Siren Song, which is still due to release in April.

    Now, it should be noted that Witch-Born is not the only title I have under this publisher. And really, the original publisher was Double Dragon Publishing but they sold to this newest publisher several years ago. I feel like that’s an important detail. I stuck with them because at the time I could not conceive of seeking out a new book cover, and there are some sticking points about material that has been edited by in-house editors at a publishing company.

    It’s a weird gray area, but suffice… the book would require both new edits AND a new cover because the publisher paid for both, and Past Aimee was too busy to do either.

    Present Aimee, on the other hand, has rolled up her sleeves and is getting the work done.

    The other two books under this publisher are Deviation and Dead Magic and yes, I have plans for these as well. I know more about the business now than I did back when they were first sold to Double Dragon, and I am a better writer today than I was yesterday, so you can safely assume I’m working on them.

    Bottom line… If you have a copy of any of these books, they are about to be Out of Print. Everything is OK. We’ve got a handle on it.

    Happy Reading!

  • Release Shenanigans – Nora and the Duke of Autumn

    I try to alternate weeks between writing posts and book review posts buuuuuut….

    But this week the paperback edition of Nora and the Duke of Autumn was released and so I am going to steal today for shouting my excitement from the rooftops.

    Mood Board – Nora and the Duke of Autumn

    For those just joining us, Nora’s story sparked with a X (then Twitter) conversation about how I loved the concept of Lucifer having a therapist in the show of the same name. Another writer and I were chitchatting about how the characters in our novels all deserved some therapy after what we put them through, and I made the offhand comment about how a lot of the romance couples needed this too.

    Bam.

    Nora’s story was born.

    An empathic wizard living in Boston who provides counseling to the supernatural living amongst us? The possibilities were endless.

    Mood Board – Nora and the Werewolf Wedding

    In the first book, I had a lot of fun introducing the world(s) where Fairy and Earthside coexist and teasing at the deeper lore hidden behind Nora’s ignorance.

    I knew a couple of things walking in. First, I knew I wanted relationships to be highlighted. In Nora and the Werewolf Wedding, we saw several relationships throughout. We saw a bride and her mother, a bride and her groom, a son and his mother, and a grandson and his grandfather, all of which played significant roles in the story.

    In Nora and the Duke of Autumn, we see Nora struggling with her personal relationships, and we see a young son rebelling against his parents, as well as a broken mother and daughter relationship. I don’t want to spoil anything here, so I’m going to be purposefully vague. There are brothers and lovers and friendships throughout the book that Nora is able to influence in some way.

    The second thing I knew walking into this series was that I wanted magic to be hidden in plain sight of humanity. Don’t ask me why, but this story can only exist with the parallel between Earth and Fairy. In Nora and the Werewolf Wedding, we stuck real close to Earthside, but in Duke of Autumn we take that major plunge into the Fairy. Sixty percent of the novel is traipsing through my steampunk version of Fairy, and I had a blast writing it.

    Everything else about the books has grown over time and will likely continue to grow as I delve deeper into the series.

    Mood Board – Nora and the Siren Song

    SPEAKING OF WHICH…

    I am excited to announce that by the end of April, I will have a completed draft of Nora and the Siren Song. (Yes, that’s only a couple of days away. Yes, I am THAT close. Currently I am sitting on the final chapter and the epilogue.)

    So here is me, throwing confetti for the paperback release of Nora and the Duke of Autumn AND finishing the draft of Nora and the Siren Song.

    Come on, 2024, let’s see what else we can get done.

    PURCHASE LINK – Nora and the Duke of Autumn

    PURCHASE LINK – Nora and the Werewolf Wedding