Ruth Ann Nordin's Author Blog

Thank you to everyone who took the time to answer my question about waiting for a few months between releases on a book where the series is closely knit together.

A sneak peak for The Rancher’s Bride will be inserted at the end of The Outlaw’s Bride

One of the concerns brought up with a couple of beta readers was not knowing what happened to Abby. Abby is the heroine for Book 2, The Rancher’s Bride.  After bouncing some ideas around over the past week, I decided to put in a sneak peak for Book 2. That way people can find out what happened to her on a particular night that is a key event in The Outlaw’s Bride.

My new email list

Also, I noticed a couple of people mentioning the importance of knowing a specific release date for The Rancher’s Bride. With homeschooling and other stuff happening that has thrown my entire writing schedule into chaos, I can’t pinpoint a specific date. I’m not getting as much writing in as did earlier this year. All I can do is give you an estimate. I’m looking at publishing The Rancher’s Bride in Summer 2020. I’m hoping I don’t have to move the date back. If the book doesn’t turn into a long one like Fairest of Them All and The Imperfect Husband did, I should be fine. But I can’t make any promises.

So to compromise, I have brought back my email list. That way when I have a new book out, you’ll get an email in your inbox letting you know about it. I’m only going to use this email list to announce new releases. I know some authors do giveaways, free reads, post a special scene, send pictures, give personal stories about their lives, etc, but I really don’t have time to do that.  So if you sign up for the email list, you will only get a simple email that says, “Here’s my new book, and this is where you can find it.”

You can go to the email link on this blog to sign up, or you can go directly to the site on MailChimp at this link.

As a disclaimer, the emails are kept on the MailChimp site. I will only use them to send out the new release emails via MailChimp. You’ll probably get an email about six times a year.

I did a test run on the sign up page, and everything went fine, but one person had an issue with it. If you’re unable to sign up, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not a technical expert. I guess the best thing to do in that case is make sure you’re subscribed to this blog (top right corner of this page–just under the roses) or subscribe to my monthly newsletter if you only want to get an email once a month.

I’m having something of a dilemma, and I would like your help figuring out the best course of action.

Warning: this post contains spoilers.

The Wyoming Series has an overall plot that covers the entire series.

So far, this is what I’ve done in this series. I’ve finished The Outlaw’s Bride, and I started The Rancher’s Bride.

I typically make the series plot low key when I write them. In this case, the series plot is more center stage.

Here is the series plot:

The villain is currently in possession of Wade’s ranch. The villain also has Wade’s two-year-old son as a hostage. This is where we are at when we begin Book 1. From Book 1 to Book 3, the plan is to rescue the boy and get the ranch back.

Without trying to give too much away, this is the series format:

Book 1: The goal is to get the boy away from the villain. Mic and Lillian (hero and heroine of this book) help in this pursuit, but I don’t go into what happens with the boy because that is a big part of Book 2. I also leave a couple of other minor things up in the air because these come into play in the rest of the series.

Book 2: Abby (heroine of this book) has the boy, and her main goal is to reunite the boy with his father (Wade). She is injured, however, and needs to stay for a while with the hero of this book (Thayne). This ends up happening by the end of this book.

Book 3: Wade (hero of this book) has his son back, and now it’s time for him to take back his ranch. This is accomplished by the end of this book with the help of the heroine of this book.

I’m thinking a Book 4 would be necessary to successfully wrap up this series. It depends on how the series plot is flowing. I may or may not get the villain behind bars or send him to the cemetery. It’s too early to tell what will happen. But the villain will be brought to justice by the end of the series plot.

As an aside, let me make it clear that each book features a specific romance plot.

Book 1: Lillian is on her way to her mail-order husband when Mic intervenes. He says he’s there to save her from marrying the wrong man, and part of this will require her to marry him. Does she agree and go with him, and if so, will he give her the happy ending she longs for?

Book 2: Abby is injured and has lost her way to get the boy to his father. She ends up at Thayne’s ranch, and she’s forced to stay there while her injuries heal. Unfortunately, he has a ranch hand and a couple of other men coming by who knows she has the boy. She’s fallen in love with Thayne, but it might be too dangerous for her to give into her feelings, so she has to make the decision between bringing him into the dangerous situation she’s in or letting him go.

Book 3: I haven’t started this book yet, so I’m not clear on the actual plot of this one, but there will be a plot where Wade finds love with the heroine of this book. I won’t know the details of this until I’m writing it.

Book 4: If I wrote this, it would involve another hero and another heroine and how they fall in love.

So in a nutshell: The books are independent as far as the romance is concerned, but they are intimately connected in relation to the boy, the ranch, and bringing the villain to justice. This would be one series best read in order because you’ll miss something if you jump ahead.

Now for my dilemma:

I can’t afford to sit and wait to write each of these books and then publish all of the books at once. I need to publish enough books every year to supplement my husband’s income. My five-year goal is to be free from the burden of needing my writing income in order to make ends meet around my house.

I have two choices at this juncture.

1. Publish Book 1 in January, Book 2 this summer, Book 3 this fall/winter, and maybe Book 4 in early 2021.

2. Drop the series completely. I can’t guarantee I’ll come back to this series. I don’t know what will happen in the future.

My question to you:

Are you okay with waiting months between each book’s release?

OR

Will you be upset if you can’t get all of the books at once?

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I’m going to tally up the responses I get. If it’s 50/50, I’ll drop the series. There has to be a significant percentage of people who are fine with waiting for me to continue with this series in order for me to go through with it. I already did something where half the people were upset with a decision I made, and I vowed to never go through that again. So that’s why I’m coming to you today asking for your input.

It’s been a while since I made one of these posts, so I thought I’d do it now. 🙂

Forever Yours is up on pre-order for anyone who wants to reserve their copy today.

Click here for the pre-order page on this site.

It’ll come out November 2.

When I put it up on pre-order in September, November 2 seemed like such a long way off. Now I think I need to make the blog post announcing it’s up before I blink and November 2 passes me by. 😛 Time has only seemed to speed up since I started homeschooling my kid.

Anyway, this is Dave and Mary Larson’s third and final book. This gives a nice completion to their overall story. I’m glad I wrote it. It was nice to see a light-hearted look at their life after all the drama I put them through.

The rewrite of The Stagecoach Bride is finally here!

I don’t know how many of you remember this book:

But this is the rewrite of it:

This will be out in January.

The basic plot is the same. The heroine is on the run from having to marry a ruthless man when a group of outlaws rescue her from ending up with a man who’s even worse. I don’t want to say more than that in case someone never read The Stagecoach Bride. But I took the entire book and rewrote it. I got rid of some characters. I changed some characters. I deleted some events and added other events. Stephannie Beman allowed me free reign to do whatever I wanted, so I did.

This is the start of the Wyoming Series. I have plans to make three books after this one. I already started Book 2, which is The Rancher’s Bride.

Special note: Since some of you have bought and read The Stagecoach Bride, I don’t think it’s fair that you should have to pay for this book, too. So when this book comes out, I’ll be offering a special coupon so you can get this book for free. But that coupon will only be good on Smashwords and on Payhip. AND I will only be putting this coupon on this blog and on my newsletter blog, I’ll also only be offering the special offer for a week or two.

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These are the books I’m currently writing:

I haven’t made much progress in any of these because I’ve been adjusting from one homeschool plan to another. As of today, my kid and I are now on track with everything, so I’m hoping I can get back to writing this upcoming week. *fingers crossed*

I’m sure I’ll get more into the progress of those three books as the next couple of months go on.

Idea for a Future Book

While I was getting things switched in the homeschool arena, the idea for Book 2 in the Marriage by Design Series came to me, and as luck had it, I found the perfect pre-made cover for it on Period Images, so I grabbed it before anyone else could.

This book follows Breaking the Rules, which is shown above. Once I finish Breaking the Rules, I plan to go into this book.

This will be a cute and fun one to write. In Breaking the Rules, Lilly tells a certain geeky gentleman, Benjamin, that her friend, Emilia, had been talking about him the other day. She didn’t mean for Benjamin to assume Emilia was in love with him, but that’s exactly what he concluded, and as I’m writing Breaking the Rules, poor Emilia now has to marry him because her father’s happily arranged behind her back.

By the time we time we get to Nobody’s Fool, it’ll be Emilia’s wedding day, and she’s made a vow that she’ll do everything possible to dissuade Benjamin from falling in love with her so that she might be fortunate enough to live in a separate townhouse from him for the rest of her life. Being that this is a romance, things won’t go as she plans, of course, but I expect it to be so much fun to see what antics she comes up with in order to be as unattractive a wife as possible. It’s times like this I wish I could write more than three books comfortably at a time. But I can only manage three, so I’ll be good and wait.

Changed Two Covers on Older Books

From time to time, I have to go in and tend to the garden of my backlist. These are the latest two I have updated to give the books a more professional look. I have a few more I want to get to, but that will have to wait for now. I can only do a little at a time. Over the years, I have also updated the formatting for the ebooks. Progress is slow, but it does happen.

Here’s the old cover for Catching Kent:

Here’s the new one:

Here’s the old cover for Meant To Be:

Here’s the new one:

So that’s it on the writing front for now. I really hope I can get back to writing because a part of me is getting antsy. Unless I’m on a planned vacation, I get restless if I go without writing for a few days, and right now, we’re going on about two weeks. It’ll be good to get back into a routine that involves me being able to write for a couple of hours 4-5 days a week.