Gay Romance by Keira Andrews

Home of happily ever afters

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  • Contemporary
    • Amish
      • A Forbidden Rumspringa
      • A Clean Break
      • A Way Home
      • A Very English Christmas
      • Leaving Zebulon
    • Adventure
      • Ends of the Earth
      • Honeymoon for One
      • Arctic Fire
      • Beyond the Sea
      • The Chimera Affair
    • Sports
      • Kiss and Cry
      • Cold War
      • The Next Competitor
      • Reading the Signs
      • Love Match
      • Synchronicity
    • Lifeguards of Barking Beach
      • Flash Rip
      • Swept Away: A Flash Rip Story
    • Valor
      • Valor on the Move
      • Test of Valor
      • Valor: The Complete Duology
  • Holiday
    • Festive Fakes
      • The Christmas Deal
      • The Christmas Leap
    • Only One Bed
    • Merry Cherry Christmas
    • Gay Romance Holiday Collection
    • Santa Daddy
    • In Case of Emergency
    • Eight Nights in December
    • If Only in My Dreams
    • Where the Lovelight Gleams
    • A Very English Christmas
  • Paranormal/Fantasy
    • Wed to the Barbarian
    • The Barbarian’s Vow
    • Kick at the Darkness
    • Fight the Tide
    • Rise: A Gay Fairy Tale
    • A Taste of Midnight
  • Historical
    • Kidnapped by the Pirate
    • Semper Fi
    • The Station
    • Voyageurs
  • Audio
    • Amish Series
      • A Forbidden Rumspringa
      • A Clean Break
      • A Way Home
    • Contemporary
      • Adventure
        • Honeymoon for One
        • The Chimera Affair
        • Ends of the Earth
        • Beyond the Sea
      • Sports
        • Kiss and Cry
        • Reading the Signs
      • Lifeguards of Barking Beach
        • Flash Rip
      • Valor
        • Valor on the Move
        • Test of Valor
        • Valor: The Complete Duology
    • Holiday
      • Festive Fakes
        • The Christmas Deal
        • The Christmas Leap
      • Merry Cherry Christmas
      • Gay Romance Holiday Collection
    • Paranormal/Fantasy
      • Kick at the Darkness
      • Fight the Tide
    • Historicals
      • Voyageurs
      • Semper Fi
      • Kidnapped by the Pirate
      • The Station
  • Free
    • Rise: A Gay Fairy Tale
    • Swept Away: A Flash Rip Story
    • A Very English Christmas
    • Synchronicity
    • Voyageurs
    • A Taste of Midnight
    • Leaving Zebulon
  • Translations
    • French
      • Un faux petit ami pour Noël
      • Lune de miel en solitaire
      • Rumspringa Interdit
      • Un Nouveau Départ
      • Trouver Son Chez-Soi
      • Le Vœu de Noël
      • Vaincre les Ténèbres
      • Combattre la Marée
      • Quand l’amour brille de mille feux…
      • Huit Nuits en Décembre
      • Transfert à Ottawa
      • Au Pied du Sapin
      • Passion en Arctique
      • Si ce n’est qu’en rêve
      • Par-delà l’océan
    • Italian
      • Luna Di Miele Per Single
      • Il Patto Di Natale
      • Rapito dal Pirata
      • Segni d’intesa
      • In Capo Al Mondo
      • Beyond the Sea (Italian Translation)
      • Sogno di Natale
      • The Next Competitor (Italian Translation)
      • Valor on the Move (Italian Translation)
      • Test of Valor (Italian Translation)
      • Contro La Tenebra
      • Contro La Marea
      • Semper Fi (Italian Translation)
      • Rise: Una favola gay
      • Una Passione Proibita
      • Una Nuova Vita
      • La Strada Verso Casa
    • German
      • Kalter Krieg
      • Im Notfall
      • Geisel des Piraten
      • Codename: Valor
      • Testphase: Valor
      • Jenseits des Ozeans
    • Brazilian Portuguese
      • Além do Oceano

2018 plans

December 31, 2017 by Keira Andrews 12 Comments

As 2017 draws to a close, I’m reflecting back and peering at the road forward and my writing plans for 2018. Lots of exciting projects are in the works!

This past year started slowly for me with publishing, largely because I was lucky enough to take a six-week trip through Australia with my mom. It was absolutely a dream come true. My dad had always wanted to visit Australia and never did in the end, and I’m so grateful to have shared the experience with my mom. I backpacked through Oz twenty years ago, and it was lovely to revisit some places and explore new ones.

Elephant Cove at Greens Pool, Western Australia

I published a single father/kidnapping adventure, Road to the Sun, in May, republished my spy caper, The Chimera Affair, in June, and spent the summer writing, writing, writing. The last part of 2017 really ramped up after I published Kidnapped by the Pirate at the end of October.

I never know how a book will be received, and historicals tend not to sell as well as contemporary. Yet this book exceeded all my expectations, which has been a real treat. I grew up on bodice-rippers, and it was such a pleasure to write a breeches-ripper! I’m thrilled by how much readers seem to have enjoyed the story.

In November and December, I published two holiday romances, In Case of Emergency, and Eight Nights in December, which was a reworking of two old stories. I was lucky enough to have Emergency go to #1 on Amazon’s gay romance charts, which was a milestone for me and a wonderful way to close out the year. I also added a few new translations to my growing collection.

CC0 License; by Daniel Büscher

Coming down the road in 2018

  1. I’ll be re-releasing my Australian historical adventure The Station in mid-January. Dar Albert has made a gorgeous new cover I’ll be sharing with you in the next week or so!
  2. I’ll also be re-releasing two figure skating novellas, Cold War and Holding the Edge, in one new volume in early February just in time for the Olympics.
  3. I’m delighted to announce that I’ve signed a contract with Tantor to release Kidnapped by the Pirate in audio in 2018. It’s still early stages, but I’ll share more info when I have it. I’m absolutely delighted to finally be delving into the world of audio books.
  4. My first German translation, of Beyond the Sea, is coming quite soon! Stay tuned for more details.
  5. There will also be more French and Italian translations coming this year.
  6. My next new novel will be the as-yet-untitled sequel to Valor on the Move. I have about 14,000 words, and I’ll be working on it for the next couple months. Planning to release in March or April.
  7. Then I’ll be writing the third book in the Kick at the Darkness series. Yes, more Adam and Parker! I also really want to write a fourth book that would take place several years later and center on Jacob. My plan is to write these books this summer and release them in Sept and October. Fingers crossed! We’ll see how it goes.
  8. I’ll definitely be writing a Christmas romance, and I’d love to do a full novel instead of a novella.
  9. Since my former publisher, Loose Id, is closing its doors in May, I’ll have the rights back to my final book with them—Love Match. This was my very first novel, published in 2006. I will definitely be republishing it, but I want to take some time to revise and re-edit it. I think I’ve learned a lot about writing in the last 10+ years, and I’m sure Luke and Jesse’s story can be strengthened. So I’ll be poking at that when time permits, and I definitely want to have it back up for sale before the end of the year.
  10. I’ll be attending the RT convention in Reno in May and my first GRL in October in Virginia. Hope to see you there!

You know what they say about the best-laid plans, but I’m knocking on wood that everything on my list will go smoothly! Thank you so much for your support, and here’s to an outstanding 2018. Wishing you health and happiness on the road ahead. <3

p.s. I’d hoped to write a fourth novel for my Amish boys, Isaac and David, this year. It looks like it’ll be 2019, but it’s still very much on my to-do list!

Filed Under: blog Tagged With: action/adventure, age difference, figure skating, figure skating romance, general romance discussion, historical gay romance, hurt/comfort, jane austen levels of pining, new adult gay romance, news, publishing, sports, translations, werewolves, writing, zombie apocalypse

Borrow Beyond the Sea from KU

June 23, 2016 by Keira Andrews Leave a Comment

Beyond the Sea by Keira AndrewsHello friends! I’ve enrolled my contemporary desert island romance, Beyond the Sea, in Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program for the summer so KU subscribers have a chance to borrow it. You can still also buy it from Amazon, and it’ll be back at all sellers in the fall.

I’ve been very busy holed up in the writing cave working on the sequel to Kick at the Darkness, which will be available at the end of July. More details coming very soon!

Hope your summer is off to a great start. (Or your winter if you’re Down Under!)

Buy or borrow:

amazon square border
International Amazon buy link for UK, Europe, Canada, etc.

Filed Under: blog Tagged With: bisexual romance, contemporary gay romance, kindle unlimited, news, publishing, writing

How to write smarter in 2016

January 3, 2016 by Keira Andrews 4 Comments

 

Happy new year! Did you achieve your goals in 2015? For me, the past year was more successful than I’d dreamed. My goal was to make a living writing romance novels full time and stay out of debt, and I not only achieved that, but did it with extra to put into my savings and emergency fund. I actually have an emergency fund for the first time in my life!

love that

(Yes, I’m a total geek about finances. If you’re interested in great, no-nonsense advice about getting your shit together, check out Gail Vaz-Oxlade’s site.)

In 2015 I published four novels, one novella, a short story for an anthology, revised and repubbed a novella, and had three translations published: one Italian and two French. (I still need to add those to my website! It’s on my ever-growing to-do list.)

The second half of this year was emotionally very draining as my dad got ill and passed away. By December I felt super burned out and honestly hardly worked the last few weeks. But now I’m recharged and ready to go! And this year, I’m resolving to be more effective about how I work.

Write smarter and faster

My friend Leta Blake‘s father has a saying: Any task will expand to fit the time allotted it. Meaning, if you give yourself all day to do something, it’ll take all day to do it. I’ve always written with daily word-count goals of 3-5,000 words, depending on the project. And too many times, it’ll take me alllll day to get those words done. I’ll start at 8 a.m. and not finish until 8 p.m., by which time I feel burnt out and like I’ve been working for 12 hours.

But I haven’t.

I go to the gym at lunch for an hour-long class and then come home and shower and have lunch. So that’s a good two-hour break in the middle of my day, and a break I think is really important. I’m not giving that up. But if you’re like me, you can somehow fritter away hours on social media and the internet. “Oh, I’ll just look up that thing…” “Oh, I’ll just check Facebook…”

…

…

…

Then I look at the clock.

hermione shocked

How do the minutes and hours go by so quickly when you’re online? Wish I knew the answer! All I know is that I need to stop wasting so much time faffing around and be more effective and strategic. I found Rachel Aaron’s blog post on going from 2K to 10K a day extremely helpful.

In early December, I put myself on a strict writing schedule: 9-11 a.m., and then 2-5 p.m. These were hours when I had my phone off in the other room, and I was only writing. I wasn’t doing promo or blog posts, or the other admin work that comes with being an author. If I had to research something, I put a note in the manuscript for later. If I absolutely had to Google something then and there, I was not allowed to open any other sites. Especially not Facebook or Gmail.

And you know what? The words suddenly started adding up. I realized I’d been going backwords by having the word count be my daily goal. Now I’m flipping it to make the writing time my must-do. Put in the dedicated, undistracted time, and the words will follow.

jhsfp

I feel like I’ve unlocked some ancient mystery that really should have been glaringly obvious. And maybe I’ll never get to 10K a day, and maybe some days will only be 2k. That’s okay. If I put in the focused time, I’m confident I’ll write smarter and better in 2016 and will be less burned out at the end of work days. If I can be more focused, I can take more time to relax in the evenings and cook/read/watch TV and recharge my batteries instead of feeling like I’m working all the time when I’m not.

What about you? What are your new year’s resolutions? Here’s to a happy, healthy and productive 2016!

Filed Under: blog Tagged With: writing

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