Hey lovelies! It gives me great pleasure today to host Lily Bly and her new book, “Enticing the Boss”! For other stops on her Goddess Fish Promotions Book Tour, please click on the banner above or any of the images in this post.
Be sure to make it to the
end of this post to enter to win a $30 Amazon or Barnes and Noble Gift Card!! Also, come back daily to interact with Lily
and to increase your chances of winning!
Thanks for stopping
by! Wishing you lots of luck in this
fabulous giveaway!
Enticing the Boss
by Lily Bly
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GENRE: Contemporary Erotic Romance
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BLURB:
Jean
Price has loved her boss for the last six years. Unfortunately, he's been
engaged to her treacherous stepsister. When the wedding is called off and a
project puts Jean in close proximity with the sexy CEO, she jumps at the
opportunity to show him how she truly feels. It's time to start enticing the
boss.
David
Shep is finally seeing his father's protégé for the stunning woman she truly
is—in the office and in his bed. But when her support is conspicuously absent
when he needs her most, he can't help but wonder if he can trust her with his
heart.
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EXCERPT ONE:
“David?”
His gaze bolted up toward me, startled. Thank goodness he’d missed my personal
tirade in the hall. He was slow to reply, as if recognizing me through a fog.
“Jean.”
He
breathed the word, and I tried hard not to get excited over the relief he
seemed to pack into the single syllable. I took a few more steps into his
office. It was in as much disarray as David. File drawers yawned open here and
there with folders skewed at angles. White boards were covered with almost
unintelligible notes.
“I
didn’t expect to see you here this late.” I adjusted the strap of my purse
across my shoulder and smoothed the lapel of my coat. He attempted to smile,
but his expression fell far short of his usual jaunty grin. Instead, he let a
frown fall and shrugged his shoulders, smoothing wrinkles on his normally
pristine white shirt across the breadth of his chest.
He
sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Beth dumped me.”
“What?”
I couldn’t believe it. David and Beth had one of those annoying fairytale love
stories behind them that I couldn’t stand, but it wasn’t just because I was in
love with the prince and, at times, had considered driving a stake through
Beth’s heart. David and Beth seemed well-staged for happy ever after. No one
except me—prince included—seemed to notice that the woman everyone thought was
Cinderella had, in fact, always been an ugly stepsister.
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BOOK TRAILER:
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GUEST POST:
Lily’s Petals of
Advice
These tips are for new writers hoping to take their craft up a step or for discouraged veteran writers hoping to find a new perspective (or commiserate in the challenges of a writer’s life). Remember, new or old, we are not alone. :-)
These tips are for new writers hoping to take their craft up a step or for discouraged veteran writers hoping to find a new perspective (or commiserate in the challenges of a writer’s life). Remember, new or old, we are not alone. :-)
Give the object the action
Always focus on the action. Most writers
have passive vs active down pat early on. However, we can take it one step
further. Consider this sentence: I felt a
blush creep up my neck. It’s an active sentence, but we can give the reader
a fuller experience with something like this: A toasty blush crept up my neck and thawed my frosty indifference,
warming inch by traitorous inch.
Sometimes a simple I felt or I watched is needed, but if you can enrich the story by revising some of those narrative phrases to something more indulgent, go for it. I find focusing on actions like this help to keep the story fresh for me, too, while I’m writing. We all hate the stagnation of writer’s block.
Get it down
The plotter versus pantser debate will always rage, and there’s no definitive right or wrong. But for a long time, I wobbled between the extremes of each. I can create amazingly detailed outlines for plots, but at the end of the day, I still haven’t bridged that gap between idea and story.
The plotter versus pantser debate will always rage, and there’s no definitive right or wrong. But for a long time, I wobbled between the extremes of each. I can create amazingly detailed outlines for plots, but at the end of the day, I still haven’t bridged that gap between idea and story.
Likewise, I can write an awesome scene by the seat of my pants, but I’ll have trouble linking it to a fully developed story arc. By the time I finally work out a complete story, I end up having to cut those favorite pantser scenes. You might say this is just ye olde kill your darlings. Sure, that is part of it. There will always be cuts, but it also feels like a massively inefficient use of my time.
The compromise I’ve found is what I call my half-draft. I think of it like a skeleton, and it’s heavily centered on dialogue/characters’ conversations with telling/plotted place holders. Will I end up revising that dialogue? Yes. Will I revise the telling to showing? Yes. However, it’s the best way I’ve found to bridge my ideas into stories and maintain the continuity of plot while letting the pantser muse have her way.
Find new angles on
revision
I’ve learned to use distance and sound for revisions. Put your project away for at least 48 hours—one to two weeks would be even better. (I know you’ve read this elsewhere…and like me, you’ve ignored it. Dammit, we just wrote the next great American novel, didn’t we? Seriously, I know we did! Everyone is going to love it!) Yes, I know you have that feeling after completing a piece of fiction. We all do, and we should be proud of what we’ve accomplished. BUT we must also realize there is always room for improvement.
I’ve learned to use distance and sound for revisions. Put your project away for at least 48 hours—one to two weeks would be even better. (I know you’ve read this elsewhere…and like me, you’ve ignored it. Dammit, we just wrote the next great American novel, didn’t we? Seriously, I know we did! Everyone is going to love it!) Yes, I know you have that feeling after completing a piece of fiction. We all do, and we should be proud of what we’ve accomplished. BUT we must also realize there is always room for improvement.
So PUT YOUR PROJECT AWAY. Set a timeframe that you can stomach and come back to it with fresh eyes—and ears. Either read it out loud to yourself, have someone else read it to you, or use a text-to-speech utility. I like https://ttsreader.com/. It’s free, and you can switch voices and reading speeds until you find something that suits. I split my screen between the browser and my document, follow along, and pause the reader as I make edits.
Combining these tactics will help you to execute a more effective revision. That distance you’ve created will allow you to see what you’ve written, not just what you intended to write. The audible format will help you catch typos and phrasing mistakes.
Be patient
(This last petal is still a work in
progress for me, too.) You FINALLY
have a polished piece! You’ve slogged through summary and query, and you’re
ready to send it out. (Utilize personalized simultaneous submissions unless
explicitly prohibited by your dream deal.) After you’ve bravely hit that send
button, the most difficult thing is to wait on the replies…for months. I’m
repeating that: months. Plural. Don’t
make yourself crazy checking your email every hour.
(Or
half-hour or fifteen minutes…you just checked again, didn’t you?
**You look around the room suspiciously**
How does she know I’m doing this?
Because I’ve been there…I’m
still there some days.)For me, patience is the hardest part of the writer’s life. Fill that heart-rending downtime with more writing, reading books in your genre, and improving your craft. If your submission doesn’t pan out, you’ll have another one to try—or understand how the first can be improved.
For your benefit and mine, I’m going to say it one last time: be patient.
Thanks for reading. (Now get to writing.)
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AUTHOR BIO:
Lily Bly lives
in North Dakota and looks forward to winter. She prefers Marvel over DC,
acoustic over electric, and tea over coffee. She thinks that love—whether
sweet, sappy, or tough—is the stuff of life and likes her reading and writing
to be chock-full of it. Before finally taking the plunge to write full time,
she worked in various industries including funeral service, law enforcement,
veterinary service, and retail health food. She writes heroines who can hold their
own and heroes dying to hold them.
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CONNECT WITH LILY:
Website:
Email:
author@lilybly.com
Facebook:
Twitter:
Pinterest:
Instagram:
YouTube:
BookBub Author Page:
BookBub Book Page:
The Wild Rose Press Author Page:
Goodreads Author Page:
Goodreads Book Page:
Amazon Author Page:
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BOOK BUY LINKS:
Amazon Kindle eBook:
Barnes and Noble Nook eBook:
Apple iBooks eBook:
The Wild Rose Press eBook:
Book Strand eBook:
Passions Price eBooks List:
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GIVEAWAY INFO:
Lily will be awarding a $30 Amazon or B/N GC to
a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.
**This post contains affiliate links and if clicked and a
purchase is made, I may receive a small commission to help support this
blog. This does not cost you anything,
it just helps pay for all those awesome giveaways on here.**
This contest is sponsored
by a third party. Fabulous and Brunette is a registered host of Goddess Fish
Promotions. Prizes are given away by the
sponsors and not Fabulous and Brunette. The featured author and Goddess Fish
Promotions are solely responsible for the giveaway prize.
Hi, Ally! Thank you so much for hosting me on my book's release day! I love the design of your website. Definitely fabulous! :-)
ReplyDeleteHi Lily! Of course :) And thank you so much! I totally love your book cover! Very enticing for sure! I have added your book to my TBR List and can't wait to check it out :)
DeleteI liked the excerpt, thank you.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad it was 'enticing' ;-) Hope you enjoy the book. Thanks for stopping by.
DeleteAwesome trailer!
ReplyDeleteThanks for watching it and commenting, Victoria! Don't forget to sign up for the Rafflecopter giveaway.
DeleteThanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading, Chelsey!
DeleteHow did you come up for the characters names in the book? Congrats on the release. Bernie Wallace BWallace1980(at)hotmail(d0t)com
ReplyDeleteHi, Bernie. Thanks for reading! Many of my characters' first names are middle names used throughout my family's history. I actually love using unusual names in my stories, but for Enticing the Boss and my other works for TWRP, I decided to tone it down a little and just go with these simpler choices.
DeleteHi, Bernie. Thanks for reading! Many of my characters' first names are middle names used throughout my family's history. I actually love using unusual names in my stories, but for Enticing the Boss and my other works for TWRP, I decided to tone it down a little and just go with these simpler choices.
ReplyDeleteLots of useful pointers!
ReplyDelete--Trix
How long did it take you to write your book? Congrats on the release. Bernie Wallace BWallace1980(at)hotmail(d0t)com
ReplyDelete