Dec
26
2012
I just finished reading the Wool Omnibus, and I’m floating. WOOL is everything a great Science Fiction should be – amazing, visceral, delightful story filled with powerful characters caught up in an epic search for meaning!
The birth of a great science fiction author is a very special event, and WOOL puts its author up there with the greatest Science Fiction writers – those who write (and wrote) books about real characters, searching for meaning, searching for their own truth, fighting and losing and winning and – above all – grabbing readers by the throat and carrying them on an amazing journey.
Wool goes up on my electronic bookshelf, along with a few select read-them-again-and-again-over-the-years Science Fiction novels, right between Alexai Panshin’s RITE OF PASSAGE and Robert Hienlien’s STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND.
Thank you, Hugh Howey! (and thank you @versoe for recommending this book!)
Vanessa Grant
Dec
22
2012
Take a man, a woman, and a starlit night.
Mix thoroughly, and add love.
Seeing Stars - free on the Amazon’s Kindle store, December 25, 26, and 27.
Download your free copy and take a journey with mountaintop astronomer Claire Welland, who is anything but starry-eyed, and the man she remembers as the bad boy from her high school days.
Free December 25 to 27 on the Amazon Kindle store!
Vanessa
Dec
7
2012
Cover art by AngieOCreations.com – I love this cover
I’ve always been fascinated by the power of certain settings to wield control over so much of our lives. When the universal themes of survival, love, and the dreams that drive human men and women interact with extreme environments, lives can be transformed in unexpected ways.
In IF YOU LOVED ME, I plunged a busy Seattle doctor into a remote wilderness in a desperate search for her son.
When the setting is remote – like the northern waters where my heroine Emma’s son Chris and his friend have disappeared, and men and women are stressed by life and death issues, there’s not a lot of room for pretence or hesitation. And when people go missing in the remote, largely unpopulated coastal forests of the North Pacific shores, everyone knows it’s a matter of life and death.
And sometimes, love.
This weekend, join me in an journey of love and adventure, in the Pacific Northwest that I love.
If You Loved Me – free on Amazon USA and Amazon UK
Vanessa
Dec
7
2012
To celebrate my birthday, I’m offering the Kindle edition of THINK ABOUT LOVE free this weekend!
One of the things I love about being a writer is the joy of sharing my belief in love with my readers. I treasure the joy of sharing life and love with the man I love, our five adult children, and seven grandchildren – the seventh, Rebecca, just arrived two weeks ago!
This weekend, I’d like to share Think About Love – a story I loved writing - with readers who love romance.
Think About Love was the first of my books to be reviewed by Publisher’s Weekly. My editor at Kensington sent me the review before I saw a copy of the printed book. I hoped to see good sales for this title, but unfortunately, hardly anyone got to see the book because the publisher discontinued the Zebra Bouquet line, and Think About Love was published in the imprint’s final month. The publisher printed so few copies that I didn’t even get the copies I’d ordered for my friends and family. I generally refer to this book as, “the one they printed 10 copies of,” although I admit that’s an exaggeration 
Now, thanks to the marvels of Indie publishing, Think About Love has been available in my own Indie edition for a couple of months. Because independent authors get to choose their own cover artists, I’m lucky enough to have the perfect cover, designed by my daughter, Angela Oltmann of AngieOCreations.com.
I hope you enjoy reading the story of Samantha, a successful and ambitious businesswoman, whose life is turned upside down when she gets a call for help in a family emergency.
Have a great day
Vanessa Grant
Think About Love – free this weekend at
Amazon.com * Amazon UK * Amazon DE
Nov
8
2012
Tonight I finished reading one of the most inspiring books I’ve read in a long time – M. J. Adam’s Unforgiving – the Memoir of an Asperger Teen
I met the author at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference a few weeks ago, and talking with her was a pleasure from the first moment. How could it be otherwise when she told me that she’d once learned something very important about writing from a workshop I presented in Surrey – that when you’re writing about relationships, there must be personal growth for the characters.
Learning that I’d helped a developing writer made my day, and before the conference ended I had the pleasure of sharing the special kind of conversation that writers treasure. I went home with her memoir and promised myself I’d read it soon.
Well, I’ve just finished reading Unforgiving, and I want to tell everyone what a great thing M. J. Adam has done.
Unforgiving – the Memoir of an Asperger Teen is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read.
M. J. Adam has crafted an inspiring book, a definite must-read for anyone who has, knows, is, or was an Asperger’s teen. I highly recommend it for anyone who cares about child survivors of any kind of trauma, or for teens struggling to understand themselves and the world they live in.
The events that happened to Margaret Jean should never happen to any child. Yet they did happen, and each page of Margaret Jean’s memoir rings with love, the amazing power of healing, and the spirit of survival.
I cried. I laughed. I cheered Margaret Jean’s indomitable inner strength, and felt honoured that she had shared herself so deeply with this reader.
Buy this book. Read it. You’ll be glad you did.
Vanessa Grant
Tags: asperger, book review, healing, M J Adam, memoir, relationships, survival, teen, unforgiving | 
Comments (1)
Comments (1) Sep
15
2012
Take a man, a woman, and a starlit night.
Mix thoroughly, and add love.
Seeing Stars – last two free days on Amazon’s Kindle store, September 15 and 16.
Download your free copy and take a journey with mountaintop astronomer Claire Welland, who is anything but starry-eyed, and the man she remembers as the bad boy from her high school days.
Free Saturday and Sunday on the Amazon Kindle store!
Vanessa
Jul
25
2012
Today is a special day for me. Think About Love is now available as a Kindle book on Amazon!
This one is special for a couple of reasons.
Think About Love was the first of my books to be reviewed by Publisher’s Weekly. My editor at Kensington sent me the review before I saw a copy of the printed book. I was thrilled that to be mentioned in Publisher’s Weekly, and pleased that I got a pretty decent review. I hoped to see good sales for this title, but unfortunately, hardly anyone got to see the book because the publisher discontinued the Zebra Bouquet line, and Think About Love was published in one of the final months. The publisher printed so few copies in the line’s final month, that I didn’t even get the copies I’d ordered directly from the publisher for friends and family. I generally refer to this book as, “the one they printed 10 copies of,” although I admit that’s a (slight) exaggeration
Now, thanks to the marvels of Indie publishing, Think About Love is available in my own Indie edition. And, because independent authors get to choose their own cover artists, I’m lucky enough to have the perfect cover, designed by my daughter, Angela Oltmann of AngieOCreations.com.
And this is a marker day for another reason – I’ve now published all of my backlist (with the exception of Pacific Disturbance, my very first book. That one needs a lot of work, and I may never get to it. Just reading the first page, it’s obvious to me that this was a writer learning her craft.)
My next project is a new book, the story of a counselor named Kate, who makes a decision that throws her into a counselor’s worst nightmare and sets her on a collision path with disaster. I’m in final revisions for Kate’s book, and one of my challenges is finding a title. I love it when titles come to me while I’m writing the first few chapters of a new story. These early titles provide a focal point for my writing, and I escape the nagging frustration of trying to find the perfect title. I know almost everything about Kate, except the name of her story. Somewhere around chapter 6, I came up with the title Lifelines, but it feels too tame for the storm Kate finds herself sailing into.
In any case, I hope to release Kate (AKA ????) before Christmas this year.
Have a great day
Vanessa Grant
Think About Love – available at
Amazon.com * Amazon UK * Amazon DE
Jul
20
2012
Free July 21 and 22 - Click to get your copy!
I’m excited to announce that my book, Seeing Stars is now available as an ebook! As a thank you to my readers, I’ve arranged for Seeing Stars to be offered free on Amazon July 21 and 22 (this Saturday and Sunday). Click on the “Buy” link Saturday or Sunday, the price is FREE! Download your free copy and take a journey with mountaintop astronomer Claire Welland, who is anything but starry-eyed, and the man she remembers as the bad boy from her high school days.
Seeing Stars
Arizona astronomer Claire Welland is anything but starry-eyed when it comes to romance. She knows her home on an isolated mountaintop observatory makes marriage to most men impossible, but that doesn’t mean she can’t have a little romantic fun. The last thing she expects when she comes home to Port Townsend, Washington, for her high school reunion is to be swept off her feet by blake McKenzie.
Once the town bad boy, Blake is now a prominent shipbuilder dedicated to helping local teens. When he asks Claire to talk to one of his boys about astronomy, he’s only thinking she might give direction to a troubled kid. He certainly never dreamed she’d inspire him – to fall in love. Now Blake is determined to show Claire that their future together is in the stars … if she’ll only open her eyes.
Jul
19
2012
The other day I received notice from KoboBooks that my new Writing Life account was ready. I’d been excited by the recent news that Kobo would be rolling out a new, writer-friendly interface for authors wishing to publish eBook editions of their books, and eager to take a look.
I went right over to find out what Kobo meant by writer-friendly. Amazon’s interface is writer-friendly, as is Smashwords. Barnes and Noble’s, not so much , but I’m hoping for improvements there now that Microsoft has invested in B&N. If Writing Life made it as convenient to publish eBooks as Smashwords and Amazon, I’d be happy. More would definitely be a bonus.
I got much more!
Signup: The signup process was easy – it took me less than 5 minutes, and that included looking up my banking information.
Distribution: KoboBooks are distributed in over 170 countries!
Payment – Yes! I was hoping for payment through PayPal rather than checks by snail mail – but I got even better. A bonus for Canadian (and I assume other non-USA) authors and publishers - Kobo pays by direct deposit to my Canadian bank account
Publishing my books – Fast, Easy, and Smooth!
This is the easiest process for uploading ebooks files, pricing, choosing sales channels, and entering the book’s meta-data that I’ve ever used. Not only was it fast to get the data up there, with easy to use forms and very little waiting – the books were available for sale almost immediately. It was easy to opt out of DRM (see my blog about digital rights management) so that my readers don’t need to worry about being locked into one format.
Information on sales – Writing Life has a beautiful “Dashboard” that allows writers and publishers to see sales numbers and estimated dollars earned at a glance, and a quick link to the publishing daqta for all books in the account.
Kudos to Kobo for a slick, convenient interface, and a system that makes authors books available in the ePUB format worldwide, on excellent terms (Kobo asks that the contract terms be kept confidential, but I found them very fair).
Kobo Rocks!
Vanessa Grant romance novels newly released on KoboBooks
- DRMfree, samples available at KoboBooks
If You Loved Me (#1 in the Emma and Jamie series)
The Colors of Love (#2 in the Emma and Jamie series)
Storm – the Author’s Cut
Jul
18
2012
I’ve been busy this week getting some of my titles up on All Romance Ebooks, and I’ll be putting more up over the next few weeks. Visit All Romance eBooks and search for Vanessa Grant.
For great romances, and people who own – or have owned – more than one format of ereader, All Romance eBooks offers a wide selection of quality romances in a variety of formats – Mobipocket, ePub, Palm, iSolo, and Rocket.
My books on All Romance eBooks are all DRMfree. Whenever I have the option, I prefer to sell my books through channels that make it possible to offer them without DRM (digital rights management). I’ve had several eReaders over the last two decades, and I always look for books that are DRM free when I buy, because then I know that – thanks to Calibre – I’ll have no trouble converting my purchase to another format if I need to.
Have a great week!
Vanessa Grant
