This is a blog to celebrate the release of Grayson’s Magical Mishaps.
It is part of the Haunted Hearts: Season of the Witch series; ten MM Romance novels written by ten different gay authors, all released leading up to Halloween and all featuring a wizard. Queer horror writer, J.P. Jackson, instigated this project after the success of last year’s Haunted Hearts series which all featured a ghost.
I bailed out of last year’s project when my story had huge plot holes, and I didn’t have the time to rethink the outline. Plus, I had a nagging feeling each time I worked on it to stop and go back to another work in progress. I eventually listened to my instinct.
But I recycled a scene from that abandoned manuscript. Its title was Benjamin and the Mystic Moon, where the Mystic Moon was a mysterious 1920s gay nightclub which Ben found himself in. Paragraphs from that chapter reappear in Grayson.
I have to thank Gwen Hayes.
MM author Blake Allwood suggested we read Gwen Hayes’ how to guide, Romancing the Beat. It is a fantastic blueprint for plotting Romance and I made a cheat sheet to help me outline.
In the novel, Grayson discovers he is a wizard when he sneezes and a small pink elephant appears. He soon learns that until he can control his magic, odd things will keep happening every time his nostrils are itchy.
One magical mishap in my outline was so outlandish, it was only meant to be there until I came up with something different. It happens in a courtroom, and as time was running out to write this book, I made a decision to commit to the idea. I’m glad I did. One of my beta readers made a point of saying he loved that chapter.
The last two scenes were ditched.
Because of the tight deadline, my beta readers were given a version where early scenes were partially developed and later scenes were initial drafts. Both betas felt important plot points were left unresolved, so a new final chapter replaced the last two scenes.
But that scene took place in a house which belongs to the mother of Grayson’s love interest, Milo. There were several chapters already featuring that house yet somehow I reimagined the floor plan, forgetting the layout which was clearly explained in earlier scenes. After a day of rewrites, this continuity issue was fixed.
Then I had to learn to format.
After my editor was happy, I was left with the daunting task of the technical side of publishing a book. Thankfully, fellow Haunted Hearts author, Glenn Quigley, came to the rescue. He sent me his print-ready manuscript as a Word doc which I began overwriting with my book. This got fiddly.
Then fellow Haunted Hearts author, Shane K. Morton, told me that if I used Draft2Digital, I could download both a print and epub version without publishing. This made the process a whole lot easier.
This year’s Haunted Hearts are all released through Kindle Unlimited.
We also made our primary audience, America. This led to issues when I tried to buy an author copy to check that everything was formatted correctly. When I clicked Australia as my Ingram printer of choice, the system kept crashing. In the end I had to settle for a $20 copy which took weeks to get here, instead of the $7 copy which would have been printed in Melbourne and would have taken three days to arrive.
At the time of writing this blog, I can’t buy author copies of my novel from Amazon. Hopefully that will change.
I feel like the publishing process has been demystified.
Working with cover designers and editors is nothing new, but to actually hold a physical copy in my hand which I produced is a new experience altogether.
CHECK OUT Grayson’s Magical Mishaps – HERE
CHECK OUT the Haunted Hearts Series – HERE
FIND OUT MORE about this book – HERE
kevin klehr 