Puzzle Cover Reveal and Giveaway

Crown of Bones puzzle hunt cover reveal and giveaway.

I'm so excited to point you all in the direction of EntangledTeen's cover reveal of my next book! The cover is spectacular and finding the pieces on the Instagram tour puts you in the running to win a copy, fresh off the press.

The Giveaway

It’s all happening on Instagram. You simply follow and copy a puzzle piece from each of these influencers below, screenshot the puzzle piece from their insta, then post on EntangledTeen to be in it to win.

Details live on the 18th on my Instagram, a.k.wilder, or Entangled's or any of the book Divas below. The influencers participating are:   

• Christy Hayes (diamondxgirl)

• Zoe (ya.its.lit)

• Kelly (stepintothepages)

• Heather (entangledteen) 

• Alli (allicatbooks) 

• Jennifer (Moonlight Rendezvous)

• Lauren James (Storied Adventures)

• Cheyenne (Cheykspeare)

• Erin (the word traveler)  

What the Cover Won't Be

I can't divulge the Crown of Bones cover until September 25th, but I can tell you what it won't be like. Here are a few of the early drafts from the Entangled Art Department.

These drafts were created with the w/t of The Bone Throwers, now the series title.

I hope you like the official cover as much as I do. Drop back here on the 25th to see it, or take the Instagram tour and be in it to win.

Fun Jigsaw Puzzle Facts

Image III

The origins of jigsaw puzzles go back to the 1760s when European mapmakers pasted maps onto wood and cut them into small pieces with - you guessed it - a jigsaw. But the name 'jigsaw' wouldn't be applied for another 150 years. Before then, the puzzles were called 'dissecting puzzles'.

Not exactly a name that flows off the tongue...

Image III is 'Europe Divided into its Kingdoms,' a1766 puzzle drawn by London cartographer John Spilsbury. It's known as the world’s very first jigsaw puzzle.

More Facts

Jigsaw puzzles are good for the brain, waking up both left and right sides. The left side sorts the pieces logically while the right side visions the finished product and works intuitively. 

And how long does it take to make one? Guinness Book of Records has 15-year-old Deepika Ravichandran as the fastest puzzler on the planet, logging in at 13 minutes and seven seconds to complete the official Guinness puzzle on May 9, 2014. 

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Stay tuned! I'll be back on the 25th with the full cover reveal just for Sup readers.

Thanks for all your support!

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Kim Falconer's New YA Fantasy Series is out March 2020 - The Crown of Bones. 

Also, check her urban fantasy out now - The Blood in the Beginning - and Ava Sykes Novel and the SFF Quantum Enchantment Series. 

You can find Kim on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Contact me also at kimfalconer.com

The End of Chaos - When Can We Do It Again?

It's very strange to be a debut author after more than a decade of striving to get through that gateway. But it's especially strange if your debut is birthed as three books released in eighteen months. *gulp* I feel that I can now tell this tale, at long last, and maybe, through my own weakness, fellow writers out there can figure out how you'd do it better, or you amazing readers can see how the cheese is made. For now, I'm just glad I survived.

The truth is, there are enough ups and downs in merely creating/editing/proofing a first book to make the most sturdy soul blanch. Because as the edits begin you become acutely aware, as you comb your way through rewrites and plot spaghetti, that this is only going to be the beginning of a very foggy journey. There is a long way still to go. But in spite of your doubt, you trudge your way through the edit phase of Book One even as you begin the daunting task of attempting to create a sequel—though you've become fairly sure through the multiple rounds of edits on Book One that you're actually a talentless hack, a charlatan, who couldn't write copy for the back of a cereal box.

Needless to say, doubt and the fear of impending failure become your familiar bedfellows as you complete those edits, then tie up the over-sized manuscript for your "bridge book", all the while being terrified everything you've been working on is a flim-flamming cliche. Your dreams at night now consist of rooms full of people laughing and pointing at you in mockery. And in the waking hours (or the witching ones) you wander in a brain fog between your coffee pot and your writing desk, making interesting mosaics on your flooring from dribbled vices like wine or Milk Duds.

But still, at long last, you turn in the jumble of words called Book Two just as Book One releases out into the world.

Shockingly(!) not too many people trash your attempt at a debut. It's actually received with interest—if not fanfare—and you feel better. You think, Huh, maybe I can do this author thing. It hasn't killed me yet!

And then the edits for Book Two begin. Your editor also reminds you of that whole "Book Three" thing you should already be half way through. *blink, blink* Book Two begins to feel contrived and underdeveloped as you attempt to untangle it, and your panic bunnies start jumping through your subconscious again, this time with great clanging symbols of ineptitude.

But, yet again, you turn in the edits and somehow manage to patch together something resembling a trilogy finale. And just as Book Two flies out to readers, you feel yourself come back to reality with a weighty thud. Because in the midst of the fog, you've forgotten your children's names, lost the dog somewhere, and you're pretty sure you accidentally went to church in your pajamas several weeks in a row. Everyone who knew you BC (Before Contract) wonder if you're even still alive, but you are on a first name basis with every Starbucks barista in town. Still, you somehow have this wide-eyed amazement at finishing (of a sort) this vast task that felt insurmountable only a year prior.

You've turned in the over-written Book Three, and you are PUMPED to have this thing nearly in the bag!

*PHEW*

So, you work like a BOSS on those Book Three edits. You make those intelligible scenes and massive plot holes your b*tch. And then you smile in satisfaction as it all wraps up and is handed back in. You've finished edits for Book Three in record time, gotten your editor's high-fives for climbing Trilogy Mountain, set up all the marketing madness you can manage for the final release, and suddenly you sit back and look at your cat named Noodle and . . . and . . .

And a dark thought creeps in. What. Comes. Next? 

For eighteen straight months you've had your bones, brains, and soul pouring into this beast of a task, this epic arc of a story, and now, well, you need to figure out what's your insides gonna do now? Because who would you be if you weren't hunched over your keyboard with bagel and smear crusted in your hair?! You'd have to, like, be normal again. Uhk!

This, my friends, is what my debut journey felt like. True confessions: I was scared of my inability to do this task as my agent and I jumped into the unknown, and now I am feeling the heavy lack of it. Because there is an alluring adrenaline to impossible deadlines, and I am definitely an adrenaline junky. I'm a go-go-go creator when pushed. I'm also apparently a massive masochist because I cannot WAIT to do this all over again. And again.

And again.

So stay tuned for the next leg in this insane journey, hopefully it'll include another sarcastic main character and shadows lurking around every corner. ;)

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Rachel A. Marks is an award-winning author and professional artist, a SoCal girl, cancer survivor, a surfer and dirt-bike rider, chocolate lover and keeper of faerie secrets. She was voted: Most Likely to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse, but hopes she'll never have to test the theory. Her debut series The Dark Cycle, described as Dickens' Oliver Twist meets TV's Supernatural, begins with the Amazon Bestseller, DARKNESS BRUTAL.

Buy: The Dark Cycle
Her Website: Shadow of the Wood

The trouble with writing trilogies

Or series at all for that matter :)

Last week, I got the edits for Future Found, the first book in the new gadda trilogy (sequel to my Dream of Asarlai trilogy). I'm not as advanced as I'd like to be because I hurt my back a couple of weeks ago and it's hampering my computer time. But on Tuesday I was powering through and I came to a realisation.

There was a lot of things I'd put into that first book that I'd completely forgotten about when writing the second.

Now, there is an easy way to solve the problem of forgetting things in the process of writing a series (which can take years) - that's to plan the entire thing out to start with. And I'm sure that there are smart people out there that do that sort of thing.

I'm not one of them. I do plan some books, and I have a general plan for the trilogy, but not a specific one. So I'd completely forgotten that the Sabhamir identified the three attackers in the first book, and then he spends the second book trying to figure out who they are. I'd completely forgotten that one of the secondary characters is sleeping with every woman he can to try and get her pregnant and if he succeeded that would impact the second book. I'd completely forgotten that I was setting one character up to be the baddie when in fact I didn't want him to be apparent as the baddie at that time.

Thankfully, I got the edits for the first book while I was finalising the second book and planning the third, so I can make the changes I need to. But sometimes, you don't get that luxury. Sometimes, the first book gets published, and then you're writing the second or third and you realise you can't do x or y because of what the readers already know.

Again, a problem solved if you planned the books.

One person that isn't planning his books is, of course, George R R Martin. In fact, he's on record as saying part of the reason the last book ran so late was because he hadn't planned and he'd written himself into some knots that took a lot of working to figure out.

Thankfully, a trilogy doesn't give you enough space to knot yourself up that much. But I do have a friend (who shall remain nameless) who forgot a character for the entire second book of the trilogy and then had to work out how the hell to explain what they'd been doing off-page all that time when they were needed in the third book.

So the moral is - plan your series.

Except I doubt I ever will. Much of the fun of writing is in exploring and wondering what will happen next. That thrill becomes all the greater when it's a story stretching over multiple volumes.

I guess I'm a sucker for punishment.

What are some of the worst mistakes you've seen writers make in a series?

Find out more about my gadda books (urban fantasy romance) at my website.