The one where I celebrate Boldwood's 4th Birthday and The Secret to Happiness goes into Prime Reading
If you follow me on the socials, or if you follow my publisher Boldwood Books, you'll already be aware that Boldwood turned 4 years old on Tuesday (1st August 2023). Boldwood have two birthdays – the day they opened for submissions (1st February) and the day their first book was published.
In that first month of trading, three books came out:
The Daughter in Law- a psychological thriller by Nina Manning
Honeymoon for One- a romcom by Portia MacIntosh
Villa of Sun and Secrets- women's fiction by Jennifer Bohnet
My Boldwood debut, The Secret to Happiness, was the fourth release on 3rd September 2023. To celebrate four years of publishing, these four ebooks are all 99p worldwide for a limited time so, if you haven't read any, it's a great time to take advantage. (Note, The Daughter in Law is no longer part of this offer at the time of writing this post so the offer is unlikely to last much longer on the other titles).
The Secret to Happiness has had a new cover (which I reported in an earlier blog post) as looked different to all my other covers. I've been admiring the new version online for several weeks and am excited about seeing it in paperback form soon. The adjustments are still going through to make sure that any new books published do have the new cover.
In exciting news today, I've just heard that The Secret to Happiness has gone into Prime Reading globally so, if you're a Prime subscriber and haven't read this already, you can get hold of it for free. It is also free in Kindle Unlimited (as are all my other titles and, indeed, all Boldwood titles).
Boldwood asked the author group if we could focus on the number four and share four tropes, four writing tips, four locations which have inspired our writing or 4 books that have inspired us. I decided to do three of the four.
Here are my four writing tips:
Four locations which have inspired my writing are:
Scarborough – predominant inspiration for Whitsborough Bay
The Yorkshire Wolds – inspiration for Hedgehog Hollow
Scarborough Lifeboat Station and Ravenscar – inspiration for The Starfish Café
Derwent Water, Portinscale and The Lingholm Estate – inspiration for Willowdale and Willowdale Hall in my new 'Escape to the Lakes' series
To find four tropes which have appeared in my books, you can watch a video on my Facebook page here.
Speaking of videos, I've got a couple more – one showing four of my series (and some future plans) can be found here and one where I wish Boldwood a happy 4th birthday and talk briefly about my journey to publication with them can be found here.
We did a little photo shoot outside Scarborough's beach huts with my series (and misc books). I particularly love the one of the stack – took a lot of effort to lift and balance them all – and the first and last (most recent) release.
We also nipped down to the beach where I couldn't resist the opportunity to recreate Autumn's pose on the cover of The Start of Something Wonderful. I call this #DoingAnAutumn and there's a little something special we're going to be doing around this later this year so do keep your eye out for more information.
It's been so lovely celebrating Boldwood's 4th birthday. I'm honoured to have been one of the first twenty authors to join them when they first set up. They have done such amazing things in the first four years and I'm excited to be part of their plans for the next four and beyond. They're so innovative, supportive and friendly and I can't thank them enough for everything they've done for my career.
Thank you also to the readers who have supported me and any other Boldwood authors. We couldn't keep writing without you.
Big birthday hugs
Jessica xx
