New and Exciting Things are Happening!

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT FREE, EXCLUSIVE CONTENT! (Link to sign up is at the bottom of this post!)

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MEET CUTE MONTHLY

If you've been in my reading group, already sub to my newsletter, or follow my blog, you have already seen a couple of these in my Monthly Updates. As a refresher, a meet cute is a single scene showing the moment our couple meets for the first time. Usually, in an unusual or sudden way. For example, they both grab for the last box of their favorite cereal and instead of either of them having to give it up, they go to the park and share it. SUPER CUTE, RIGHT?!

The heat level for these scenes will vary. (See the end of this post for how I will label the heat levels.)

Going forward, the Meet Cute Monthly will be sent exclusively to my newsletter subscribers on the third Monday of every month!

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SATURDAY MORNING SERIAL

This is the BIG ONE!

Starting October 17, 2020 I will be sending, exclusively to my newsletter subscribers, a chapter a week of a brand new story! These stories will contain steamy scenes, just like my published books. Each week, I will include a heat level rating to let you know what to expect. Keep in mind, if you opt not to read the higher heat level chapters, you may miss out on plot and character development. Though the sex scenes I write are open door, they are not without substance.

The Saturday Morning Serial goes out every Saturday morning, 8:00 am (Chicago time.)

Note: These stories will eventually be published to Amazon but you can get them first and completely free by signing up!

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STILL INTERESTED?

If you've been with me a while, you might remember me talking about an age gap romance called Running Into Trouble. This will be the first Saturday Morning Serial!

Here's a little blurb: I'm trying so hard not to get involved with a woman half my age but when all she wants to do is help make my father-daughter dinner the best it can be, how can I say no?!

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TOO HOT TO HANDLE!

Look for the flaming hearts! I'll be using them to indicate the heat level of each chapter of the Saturday Morning Serial and the Meet Cute Monthly.

I think the easiest way to explain them is to use the baseball analogy. The bases do not directly relate to the number of flames but hopefully, it still makes sense. lol

1 flame = Up to bat. No physical contact beyond holding hands or face touching. Maybe a dirty thought or comment on physical appearance.

2 flames = First base. They've started kissing and are hinting at stealing second. Partial nudity, no touching.

3 flames = Second base. Touching has progressed to above the waist, maybe under the shirt but they still have their clothes on.

4 flames = Third base. They've moved below the waist. Probably in their underwear by now or are partially nude.

5 flames = Home run. Full nudity and/or intercourse/penetration.

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HOW DO YOU GET ALL THIS AMAZING STUFF?!

Sign up for my newsletter! When you click submit, you are confirming you are 18 years of age or older and consent to receiving fictional scenes of a sexual nature to the email address you use to receive my newsletter.

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SIGN UP NOW -> https://theanastasiaaustin.com/newsletter

Thanks everyone! Hope to hear from you soon!

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About the artwork: All photos and the flaming heart icon were licensed from depositphotos.com

All cover designs were created by me, with the help of my husband (thanks, Tebs!)

The scenes were sourced from bookbrush.com

Writing: Monthly update for July 2020 + short story (sort of)

Hello friends!

July was pretty laid back. Watched a lot of shows, read some books, spent a lot of time with the husband and son.

It's been a long and short summer all at the same time but I'm ready for fall to get here! I don't know about you, but I can't wait to get out my sweatshirts and scarves! 

Thanks for sticking with me!
💕Anastasia

Read in July:

Wow. I did not read a single thing on my TBR in July LOL. But I did enjoy what I read. Especially, HUSKY. It's short and definitely more on the erotica side but so much different than what I expected. Self conscious, husky (obviously) hero with a heart of gold. Love that! The alien romances (Choosing Theo and Draekon Mate) were fun reads. Can I Come Over was alright. Didn't blow me away but wasn't bad. 

What did you read in May? Find any new favorites?

August TBR:

Since I'm going to start drafting in August, I'm not sure I'll get a lot of reading done. I started reading We Shouldn't and Yet... (Forbidden age gap romance) and Hosed (fireman romance) I'll turn to these when I do take the time to read. 

Word Count:

July was the death of my word count goals 🤣 I took an intentional week off after finishing the beta reader copy. There were a few days of outlining the new series but I decided not to count those words. Then my brain was too full to start drafting …

July was the death of my word count goals 🤣 I took an intentional week off after finishing the beta reader copy. There were a few days of outlining the new series but I decided not to count those words. Then my brain was too full to start drafting the next book, so I put some words to something else for a day there at the end of the month. More about that in the next segment. Or join my Facebook group, Anastasia's Stowaways to read the scene.

Meet Cutes:

I love meet cutes! That first spark is my favorite part of writing. For Stephanie and Roland in Fake to Fate, it was her wrong number and him answer making obscene noises. For Katie and Isaac, it was him coming up behind her and melting her with his words. For Jake and Amber, it was when Evan introduced them at a bar and Jake didn’t think he had a shot in hell.

These moments are what inspire me to tell a couple’s story but I have so many of these moments in my head I couldn’t possibly write them all into full novels. Or at least not fast enough for my liking. I want to share them with you too much to wait for their books to be written.

So, to give my brain a little relief from all the couples up there shouting at me to tell their story, I’m letting them share how they met with you!

I hope you enjoy♥

Please sign up for my newsletter to receive this exclusive content!

Current Romance WIPs:

Forcing Fate - Release day August 20, 2020! This will be a live release, no preorder. So be on the lookout for the release day announcement with a link to the Amazon listing! 

Check out my Facebook post for more information and enter a Giveaway (Amazon gift cards) ending on Friday the 7th of August, 2020!

Love on Main (Small Town romance) series - This is a new series of four books connected to the Fate series and to Reunited. 

These are all about people falling in love on the Main Street of a small town. At least one of the main characters owns a business or works in a business on Main Street. 

Book 1 will be Haley's story. Lia's friend from Reunited. 

Book 2 will be the story of a side character you'll meet in Forcing Fate.

Book 3 and 4 will be all new characters

I hope to have more information (titles, tropes, character names, all that good stuff) about this in next month's update. After I have a chance to get some drafting done. 

The End

Thanks for reading! Keep moving forward!

Read now!

Writing: Monthly update for November





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Annnddd... we have another cat. We think she was dumped outside of town. She followed my husband home from a city council meeting. We called around and found out she'd been hanging out at city hall for several days. No one was looking for her and the shelters were all full. The snow and freezing weather was coming, so we took her in. Meet Harper! She's about 5 months old now and about 5.5 pounds. And a real stinker! We love her so much!




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She's getting along great with our nearly 3 year old Cricket...





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And the cantankerous 10 year old Caillou wishes the youngsters would leave him alone!





November didn't slow down after the cat drama.

Thanksgiving festivities kicked my butt! Hopefully all of you in the states are recovering better than I did. 

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December 1st, we put up our little Christmas tree. We have two cats who haven't yet experienced Christmas. So, we thought we'd use the little tree to train them. Already found ornaments on the floor and little Harper is a chewer. lol Here it is all lit up!


Now for the writing...

Current Romance WIPs:

FACING FATE - After last month's drama, I'm happy to announce this is ready for revisions! I'll be getting to it soon but I would first like to finish drafting the book I'm currently writing. More about that below. 

INFINITELY ENDLESS (aka Plus One) - The (VERY) rough draft of this is done! It will need a lot of revisions. I'm not sure if I will do this one after FACING FATE or wait because it is so rough. That's what happens when I take long breaks in my drafting process rather than writing straight through.

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RUNNING INTO TROUBLE (an age gap romance) - Started drafting this toward the end of the month. I flipping love it! Daniel and Riley are quickly becoming my favorite characters. I'm roughly a quarter of the way through the rough draft. Hoping to finish it before Christmas!

Here's a little blurb: He’s trying so hard not to get involved with a woman half his age but when all she wants to do is help make his father-daughter dinner the best it can be, how can he say no?!

Word Counts:

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November was better! Though, can you see the impact Thanksgiving had on me? lol

Total for the month was 20,667! Not NaNoWriMo but still a solid month!




Publishing News:

Nothing to report. I'm hoping to publish FACING FATE in late January/early February. Will keep you updated!

Read in November:

Warning I wish I'd had: Sweet Liar is NOT a standalone. It's a part 1 of 2. Literally only the first half of the story. I was quite upset when I finished and found this out.

Magnificent Bastard is a lot of fun though. :D





Thanks for reading. Keep moving forward!

Buy the first two books in the FATE series today!

Thank you!

New WIP. Who dis?

Earlier this week, I started writing Daniel and Riley’s story. Only one scene done and I already love these two.

He’s trying so hard not to get involved with a woman half his age but when all she wants to do is help make his father-daughter dinner the best it can be, how can he say no?!

Running into Trouble.png

I have no clue when you’ll see this book. I’m just so excited about it, I had to share!

♥♥

Writing: Monthly update for October

Current Romance WIPs:

FACING FATE - Oh, the drama... So, this book had been moving at a snail's pace even though the word count kept rising. I mean, just look at my word count tracker for October! It wasn't until October 30th that I realized why I couldn't find the end of this book.

I'd already passed it.
Here's what I posted in one of my writing groups after it happened...

"I wanted to scream last night but was in a library. Don't think they would have appreciated it. So, I've been frustrated with how long my current WIP is taking to finish. Turns out, I blew past the ending! UGH!!!!!

I sat down last night and wrote a sort of synopsis for the book, ignoring the fact I'd already written most of it. I allowed myself to let things happen that felt right, whether they existed in the book already or not and to come out in whatever order they flowed naturally. Doing this, I discovered I was chasing the wrong ending, things were happening out of order, and I'm missing some key character and plot moments. 😭😭😭

On the upside, I've already written the climax of the story. So, to "finish" the book, I just need to back up and write the resolution.

Downside, this thing is going to need some serious revisions and I'm probably going to lose several thousand words in the process."

As of, November 2nd, I'm done drafting FACING FATE! And now I'm going to take a break from it for a couple of weeks.

INFINITELY ENDLESS (aka Plus One) - This is what I'm drafting while I take a break from FACING FATE. It's coming along nicely! Hoping to finish it this time around.

Word Counts:

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Got a lot of words written in October, but didn't make a whole lot of progress. UGH!

November will be better!




Publishing News:

Nothing to report!

Read in October:

FYI: Most of these are short reads. Just Roommates is the only full novel on the list. A couple are more like teasers, which I didn't know going into them (Rock Hard, Snowed in with the Ranger, and Lightning Strikes)






Thanks for reading. Keep moving forward!

Buy the first two books in the FATE series today!

Thank you!

Writing: Monthly update for July

I finally fought my way out of revisions!

Current Fantasy Romance WIPs:

So, I included this in my update last month without considering whether or not readers of contemporary romance would also be interested in fantasy romance.

If you wouldn't mind, I'd love your help deciding whether or not I should publish Fantasy Romance under a different name.

Please respond to the following questions with your thoughts.

Do you only wish to read contemporary romance and would not like to get updates about fantasy romance? Or would you like to know about everything I write, regardless of genre?

Thanks in advance for your input! 

Current Romance WIPs:

FIGHTING FATE - I DID IT! I finished revising! Today, I will contact my beta readers and ask for feedback to be returned within two weeks. After that, I'll revise again, considering their feedback. Then, it's off to ARC readers before publishing!

Release day is not set yet but I expect it will be mid-September.

Can't wait for you all to read Katie and Isaac's story! They fought me just as much as they fought the feelings they had for each other. But it was worth it in the end! I hope you all love them as much as I do. 

PLUS ONE - I will pick this up again in about a week. My family and I are going on a trip to Minnesota next week to an author signing event for the release of Mary E. Pearson's new release, Vow of Thieves and I have to finish reading her ARC!

Word Counts:

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You'd think this was a drafting month, not a revision month based on those word counts! 

I suppose it kind of was. I added over 20K words to the "first" draft, that was really more of a zero draft.

Really excited Fighting Fate will be a full novel now that it's over 50K words!

 

Publishing News:

Nothing to report on Fake to Fate.

Fighting Fate should come out Mid-September. I'll let you all know the official release day when I know it and include a pre-order link!

Read in July:

I feel like it's worth noting, this book was a gift from my wonderful, supportive husband. 

Thanks for reading. Keep moving forward!

Buy FAKE TO FATE! Ebook and paperback are on Amazon now. Thanks!

If you would like more frequent updates, please follow me on Instagram. If you're as impatient as I am, you can get some of the information in my updates when it happens rather than having to wait for the monthly update!

Writing: Monthly Update for June

You know... I should just accept that these updates will happen as close to the beginning of the month as my schedule will allow. LOL #BUSY

Querying:

Not Querying for the foreseeable future. Why? I love self publishing. There may come a project someday that might benefit from the hassle that comes with traditional publishing but at this point, I want to self pub all my projects. Fantasy too.

Current Fantasy WIPs:

Which leads me to this.

I might change the title of this section to ROMANTIC Fantasy because I LOVE writing romance. And now I have a series (or it might be a serial. Not sure) I've started outlining!

The series is 12 novellas inspired by the world and characters of my short story UNDER THE AMETHYST SKY. You can read that short, but keep in mind, Kaia's and Theo's story will be a little different when I turn it into a novella. The world building has evolved a bit in the last week or so while outlining the first book.

I'm really excited to start this project but I have a few contemporaries I need to finish first.

Current Romance WIPs:

FIGHTING FATE - YIKES! It has been a real fight to finish this book. And I'm still not done. But I am further along!

I'm closing in on the end of the first revision. When that's done, I will read through it again and make final edits before sending it to beta readers.

It's happening! Slower than I'd like but it is happening!

PLUS ONE - This guy is waiting for me to finish FIGHTING FATE revisions. I'm getting there, little buddy!

Word Counts:

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I feel like I was a lot more consistent with my writing this month. I missed several days of words but not because I wasn't writing. Words are not always added when revising.

Really wish I could have been drafting in June. Oh, well. July is looking up!

 

Publishing News:

FAKE TO FATE:

June was a slow month. Still had just over 1000 page reads!

Can't wait to see what releasing a second book will do.

Thank you, everyone for your support.

Read in June:


Thanks for reading. Keep moving forward!

Buy FAKE TO FATE! Ebook and paperback are on Amazon now. Thanks!

Just Writing Things - 1

This month has been nuts!

Even though I took a vacation from work, I don't feel rested at all! And don't have nearly enough writing to show for it.

But, hey! At least I got some spring cleaning done!

As far as the writing goes. It's going! And I hope I've found a way to keep writing even when I hit writer's block!

After I finished writing FAKE TO FATE I tried jumping straight into the next book in that world following one of the side characters. It did NOT work.

I LOVE using placeholders when I draft. If I don't know a character's name or a place name or if I don't feel like writing a certain scene, I'll put a thought or reminder in brackets [] to come back to later.

Well... That book ended up being pretty much nothing but placeholders. I wrote over 6000 words and had already hit the middle plot twist of the book! Terrible!

So, I put it aside and started writing something else. That something else turned out to be PLUS ONE. The drafting of this book was going really well. I was on track to finish it by the end of May. Then, I had an epiphany on the way to work for the second FATE book.

There I was, 14,000+ words into the PLUS ONE draft and all I could think about was the book I knew I'd have to start over from ZERO to make it work.

What do you do?!

Write what must be written!

I put aside PLUS ONE and started over on what it now called CAN'T PLAN FATE. Not sure the title will stick. What do you think? Should I keep it?

Anyway, I've been drafting CAN'T PLAN FATE for a couple of weeks and have over 18K words and just wrote the midpoint plot twist! I'm all caught up with over half the words I had at this point the first time around! ANNNDDD I have 14K words of PLUS ONE waiting for me when this is finished!

Now, here's what I'm hoping to do to keep up the momentum. Write two books at once. Or, at least, have another book to write when I get stuck on the first. Sometimes, things just need to simmer in the subconscious for awhile. That's okay!

♥

Thanks for reading!

 

Buy FAKE TO FATE on Amazon! Paperback and ebook available! You can also read for free with Kindle Unlimited!