Here it comes…
I’m very excited about this one. Hopefully you are too!
Cheating Sunrise – in for pre-order review
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Cheating Sunrise – spoiler free FAQ
With my fourth novel in a limbo state, half published (paperback is out) and half not published (Kindle version isn’t available for pre-order for a few more days), I have time to post a quick FAQ to answer those burning questions that I know you are eager to ask.
Is Cheating Sunrise a chronological sequel to Midnight Cocktail, and do I need to read Midnight Cocktail first?
Yes and no. The events in Cheating Sunrise occur after the events in Midnight Cocktail, and several of the characters appear in both books, but you don’t need to have read Midnight Cocktail in order to to fully enjoy Cheating Sunrise.
Why aren’t the vampires in the Blood:Lust series the usual supernatural vamps with paranormal powers?
The vamps in Midnight Cocktail and Cheating Sunrise are a separate species that evolved alongside humans. They are not the undead, and they don’t have superpowers. They do live for a very long time, have fangs, love the taste of blood, and tend to stay out of the sunlight. But no superpowers, no mind-reading, no turning into bats, or mist, or angst-stricken teens.
Midnight Cocktail has a lot of gratuitously graphic sex scenes. Is Cheating Sunrise the same?
No. This was a fundamental design decision based on feedback which made it clear that my readers preferred “the second half of Midnight Cocktail” which was the half with more story, plot, and action than smut.
Does [a particular character from Midnight Cocktail] come back in Cheating Sunrise?
Sorry, that would be a spoiler. Lana is back, fairly obviously, but I’m not going to say anything about any of the other characters as I don’t want to ruin the surprises.
Where do the events in Cheating Sunrise take place?
Lana still lives in New York but, as in Midnight Cocktail, the events of the story take her to various other locations.
Who did the cover art for Cheating Sunrise?
The excellent cover was created by Nikolai Ostertag, who also did the Midnight Cocktail cover.
How many people read Cheating Sunrise before it was published?
Three, and they provided a lot of really valuable – and different – feedback and recommendations that have helped make it the book that it is.
How much is the paperback version of Cheating Sunrise, and why is it so expensive?
$16.49 (US) or £9.99 (UK). Trust me, I’m not making much out of that because the print-on-demand costs are pretty high for a 400+ page book. Cheating Sunrise weighs in at 432 pages in its paperback format. If I could make it less expensive, I would, but I can’t.
How much is the Kindle version of Cheating Sunrise going to be?
The special pre-order price will be 0.99c / 0.99p for the full pre-order period. Once the book is published (meaning after the pre-order period ends) the price will go up, probably to about £2.49 and whatever the equivalent is in all the other regions.
If there was an audiobook of Cheating Sunrise, who would do the narrating?
I’d like to hear Cheating Sunrise read by Alissa White-Gluz.
When is the next book in the Blood:Lust series coming out?
Possibly late 2017. I will have at least one other book published before that.
Cheating Sunrise – paperback soft-launch
I wanted to make the Cheating Sunrise paperback available at the same time that the Kindle version goes on Amazon for pre-order, but the coordination of those two different releases isn’t something that can be timed that precisely, at least not when you’re dealing with it all yourself.
What this means is that I have already published the paperback version (via Createspace) and it will be available on your local Amazon store some time in the next few days.
You can check it out on the Createspace store here:
The paperback cover turned out really well, as you can see…
Cheating Sunrise – website page added
I’ve recently added a page to this site for Cheating Sunrise. There’s also a new banner that will eventually (with slight rewording) replace the current header image on my twitter account (@JWTapper).
Cheating Sunrise – the soundtrack to my writing
Here are the albums that I was mostly listening to while I wrote (and while I’m editing) my fourth novel, Cheating Sunrise. This list isn’t representative of the style or theme of the novel, or the kind of music that I imagine playing in the background of any particular scene. This is just music that I have been listening to over the last eight or nine months while I’ve been writing this book. And working out. And driving.
I’ve listed the albums in alphabetical order of band/artist, because that’s always a good idea. If you click on an image, it will take you to the album’s iTunes page. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
One of those bands does get a very brief mention in Cheating Sunrise, but you’re going to have to wait until it is published to find out who that is.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of the above bands for providing background music and a considerable amount of inspiration while I’ve been writing and editing over the last nine months or so.
Cheating Sunrise promo
Here’s the first one. There will be more.
Cheating Sunrise – test reading has started
I’m in that intriguing, exciting period (which usually lasts about 5 minutes) between finishing the last chapter and entering the test-reading phase. Right now, I’m doing the non-writing stuff which is mostly just me sending the book out to a few people to test read.
I will be going back to re-read and edit the whole book several times myself, to get it as polished as it needs to be before I go into publishing mode.
This is a very rough estimate, but I reckon I’ll have Cheating Sunrise ready for pre-order within a month. It’s going to be on Amazon Kindle for digital, and also available in paperback. I’ll do a back-cover reveal before the book goes on sale, but I’ll probably leave that for a couple of weeks while I’m editing.
The book doesn’t have its own page on this site yet, so I’ll also be sorting that out very soon.
Cheating Sunrise – cover evolution
Here’s the short story of the evolutionary process of the cover for my fourth novel, Cheating Sunrise, which is due to be published during the first quarter of 2016.
My original idea was this rough mixture of basic images, with text in the same font that I had chosen for Midnight Cocktail. I sent it to the cover artist with a few lines asking for something that looked vaguely like that kind of composition.
He came back very quickly with this sketch, which was mainly to confirm that I was happy with the basic design, which I was.
The first colour draft that he sent me was pretty much exactly what I was thinking of when I put that first rough image together.
This is what it looked like before the final details were added:
I asked for a few minor changes, which I’ll leave for you to spot, and I had my finished cover:
Once again, many thanks to Nikolai Ostertag for his great work.
Fourth novel – cover reveal
Here’s the cover for my soon-to-be-released fourth novel, Cheating Sunrise. It’s the second book in the Blood:Lust series, and that’s pretty much all I’m giving away right now…
The cover was created by Nikolai Ostertag.
Click on the image above to open a full size view of it.
I went back to the artist responsible for the Midnight Cocktail cover because I wanted some image continuity, also because Nikolai is a great artist, fun to work with, and very efficient at producing exactly what I ask for.
More details, including a release date, will be posted here soon. I’m anticipating a release in the first quarter of 2016, but a lot depends on feedback from test readers. If you would like to be involved with that, please let me know via the contact page on this site.
Midnight Cocktail – sequel news
I haven’t posted anything to this blog for a couple of months because I’m concentrating on using most of my free time to write the second novel in the Blood:Lust series. Based on what I’ve written so far, I expect to have the book written by the end of October, edited and honed to something vaguely resembling a finished product by the end of the year, and published not long after that.
I’ll do a title reveal in a month or two, and a cover reveal whenever I have a cover sorted out. Talking of covers, I haven’t done anything about this one yet but I am hoping I can get the same artist who did Midnight Cocktail to do the sequel. He is a fast worker, so I’m not too bothered about getting the cover done yet.
Future plans, following this book’s publication, will include tidying up the third novel in the Kate Hayes series and publishing it. It’s already written, just not in a publishable state yet. There will be a fourth novel in that series, and I’ve already planned it out and written a couple of rough 10k word chapters.
That’s all for now. I have much better things to be writing than this.
J W Tapper 