JDDC2 - Goodreads Giveaway

Help me spread the word - Johnny's up for grabs over at Goodreads. Available in print and lots of e-formats through Amazon, Smashwords, Sony, Barnes & Noble and lots of other outlets.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Johnny and the Vampires of Versailles

by Cody Young

Giveaway ends May 20, 2013.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Katie's Hero Giveaway

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Katie's Hero

by Cody Young

Giveaway ends February 20, 2013.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Johnny's waiting for you

Yes, it's ready and waiting for you.  A new time-travel adventure with Maddie Lambourne and Johnny De Vere - this time taking you back to the French Revolution and the Palace of Versailles.

The sequel to Johnny Doesn't Drink Champagne went up on Smashwords last night.  Go grab an early copy and start reading, because I can't wait to hear what you think about this one.

You'll find several familiar faces in the book, and you'll meet lots of new ones. I hope you like Claude, the French art student - he's one of my favorites - and I had a lot of fun creating the Coachman and the Count de Marshmallow.

Update: - Amazon listings now available! For kindle copies on amazon.com click here.

For other e-book formats including epub and pdf go to Smashwords. Listings on Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Sony and all the other main retailers of e-books will appear over the next couple of weeks.

New Cover!

Crimson Romance has just sent me the final version of the cover. I was so nervous opening the file - but it's everything I hoped for - and it's got something in common with the one I did for Johnny Doesn't Drink Champagne. Just a few weeks to go before the release date (September 24) If anyone out there would like a free e-copy (or print, when they are ready) just let me know. I would love to get some reviews one this one.

Katie's Hero

Huge news - I'm now signed with Crimson Romance - an imprint of F+W Media in America. Yes, I have a publisher!!! Katie's Hero was the book that cracked it for me. I cannot reveal too much about the story - as it has not gone through final edits at Crimson yet. But I will share the brief teaser that I sent to Crimson that got my a request for the full....

London, 1940

Katie’s got a guilty secret and she’s hiding out in London. Bombs are falling all around her, but she doesn’t care if she lives or dies.

Michael is a handsome young pilot who likes to play the hero, especially when there’s a pretty girl involved.  But duty calls him away, just when Katie needs him the most. Wounded and full of regrets, he’s not sure she’ll give him a second glance.

Tom is a lovable rogue, or that’s what he likes to think. He’s touring the world at the Army’s expense, but he’s missing Katie more every day. Could he wrangle another chance with her -  after everything he’s done?

Katie’s Hero is an extraordinary story of the healing power of love. Fall in love with Katie’s Hero today.

The team at Crimson Romance say the release date for Katie's Hero will be September 24. I will keep you posted when I get to see what they come up with for the cover. Very exciting!! Crimson is still appealing for more authors so if you haven't visited their FB page and website yet - get over there.

For those people who are waiting for the sequel to JOHNNY DOESN'T DRINK CHAMPAGNE (currently going free on B&N, smashwords, and i-tunes) - it's almost there. It will be released any day now, first in e-book, then in print. Many thanks for the wonderful reviews.

Free stuff

To celebrate the almost imminent release of Johnny and the Vampires of Versailles, I am letting the first book of the series go free in e-book format on Smashwords.
Here's the link: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/99658

I would love to say it is also free on Amazon, but I have to wait and see if they price match and let it go free there too. Last time I did a freebie - I had over sixty thousand downloads over a period of months. Since I think Johnny Doesn't Drink Champagne is a more exciting book, I am looking forward to getting lots of new readers and hopefully building up a bit of a buzz for the release of the sequel.
So please - tweet it out and tell everyone you know.

Also, I am giving away two copies of the PRINT version of Johnny Doesn't Drink Champagne on Goodreads. Here are the details:

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Johnny Doesn't Drink Champagne

by Cody Young

Giveaway ends July 29, 2012.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Cody On Writing

Okay, I know I’m not Stephen King  (although Amanda Hocking does say it’s okay to dream big) but I’m borrowing a couple of his words, just for this post. This is my advice ‘on writing’ – I’m putting this out there for those of you who are starting your journey towards writing a book and finding a readership. For those of you who are waiting for news about Johnny De Vere - don't worry. His next adventure is shaping up to be awesome. Well I think so, anyway.

Back to writing:-

Read On Writing, by Stephen King. Read it again. Read between the lines – because the best part of many books is written there. There's a Swedish proverb that says so, so it must be true.

Take a look at Randy Ingermanson’s  ‘snowflake’ method to help you plan your book. I’ve used this and it really helps. Try writing a 'character' sheet for some of the people you've known in your life, and then change their names and use them in your fiction. Live dangerously.

Look at Blake Snyder’s Beat Sheet. Devise your own version of ‘The Board’ for outlining your story. It’s fun. Just remember though, that you’re not writing a movie script, unless you ARE writing a movie script. And fashions in movies and novels change – you don’t want to be so tied to the Beat Sheet that you lose the element of surprise.

Read Bob Mayer’s “Novel Writer’s Toolkit’ – particularly for advice on the bad guy. Yes, there needs to be a bad guy. Don’t kill him too soon, and don’t kill him by accident.

Read your dialogue out loud, or use an application like TextAloud to read it back to you. That way you won’t write dialogue that sounds like a badly-written wedding speech mated with an infomercial.

If you are writing romance – research the 12 steps to intimacy, and think very carefully about how to insert them (into your novel) with finesse, rather than crashing, clumsy embarrassment.

Ernest Hemingway said that ‘the writer’s job is to tell the truth’, preferably in plain words that most of us can understand. Otherwise your meaning may be lost in the foggy thicket of your words. I read that last bit in a grammar book somewhere and I wish, wish, wish I could tell you which one. Leave me a comment if you know.

Many books on editing freak out about repetition. Repetition is bad, bad, bad, they say. But some of the very best authors use it well. My advice is to be very careful what you repeat, rather than feeding your work into some dumb program to learn how many times you wrote ‘and then’ or ‘he said’. Look at this from William Shakespeare if you still think repetition is bad:

OLIVIA:  Where goes Cesario?

VIOLA: After him I love,
More than I love these eyes, more than my life,
More, by all mores, than e'er I shall love wife.
If I do feign, you witnesses above
Punish my life for tainting of my love!

She’s in love, right? And her love means more to her than her life. We get it. Do you get what I mean about repetition?

I hope this encourages you to break a few writing rules – coz some of them suck. 

Happy writing. 

Love from Cody.