Alpacas on Tour, Cats in The Works, Owls in Prime and a Special Milestone
Welcome to October! In the UK, we’ve definitely hit autumn. The temperature has dropped and the leaves are changing colour. My favourite sort of day is where we have a clear blue sky and sunshine but there’s a slight nip in the air and that’s exactly how yesterday and today have been. Gorgeous.
I spent most of September in my writing cave and then my editing cave and didn't have a moment free to write any blog posts, so I wanted to stop by with a catch-up on various bits and bobs.
Alpacas on Tour
The blog tour for The Best is Yet to Come came to an end with 24 gorgeous reviews. Thank you to Rachel Gilbey from Rachel’s Random Resources for organising it and the 24 bloggers who took part and shared their love for the series, this book and alpacas. I've shared some of the tour quotes in this post.
The Best is Yet to Come has taken the record from A Breath of Fresh Air as the title of mine to gather the most reviews/ratings the quickest. Book books gathered 100 and 300 reviews at the same speed (3 days and 5 days respectively) but the alpacas reached 500 reviews/ratings at exactly a week, two days ahead of A Breath of Fresh Air. They were also two days ahead in reaching the 1,000 milestone at exactly two weeks and, a month on, are closing in on 2,000 ratings. Takes my breath away!
Thank you so much to every reader who takes the time to leave a review or rating for any of my books. It makes such a difference to an author to receive a positive response to their writing, as well as helping with the visibility of the book.
Book 4 is up for pre-order on Kindle here. It doesn’t have a title, cover or blurb as I haven’t written it yet but I’ll be starting on it next week. As with all my books, it’ll be out in all formats (digital, print and audio) on publication day and will go up for pre-order on other formats nearer the time. The publication date is 15th May 2025.
Cats in The Works
Christmas at the Cat Café has gone into branches of The Works around the country. This is my third title to go in this year and my thirteenth in total. I'm so grateful to the wonderful team at The Works for stocking so many of my books.
I usually catch it in my local branch in Scarborough to sign copies but I don’t get into town very often and only made it this time after it had sold through. I did manage to spot it in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, when I was on a road trip with the hubby a couple of weeks ago.
Do let me know if you spot it in your local branch and also watch out for Healing Hearts at Bumblebee Barn and Summer Nights at The Starfish Café which might still be in stock.
Owls in Prime
A New Dawn at Owl’s Lodge has gone into Amazon Prime so is available to read for free to anyone who subscribes to Prime. This has given it a lovely boost back up the charts, although not quite as high as the Kindle Top 100.
A Top 100 position has been illusive for me this year. A Breath of Fresh Air charted at #75 on publication day but I haven’t had any books make it in since so a big learning for me this year has been not to panic about chart positions. Some books get chart highly and others don’t but it doesn’t mean they aren’t selling / readers don’t love my work anymore.
This is the second book in The Bumblebee Barn Collection and I’ve just finished edits on the final book in this series. We have a title – A Forever Home at Honey Bee Croft – and it’s up for pre-order for Kindle now, out on 22nd January 2025. As with Escape to the Lakes Book 4, it’ll be out on all formats on publication day and be available for pre-order on those nearer the time.
I really love this series of three books. It was fabulous spending time with favourite characters from the Hedgehog Hollow series through the Bumblebee Barn world and I hope readers love this final story in the series.
Speaking of Prime Reading, The Start of Something Wonderful (book 1 in the Escape to the Lakes series) is still in Prime Reading so if you're in Prime and haven't started on the Escape to the Lakes series yet, now's a good time to grab it. It'll be in there for a couple more months.
Another Sales Milestone Reached
If you follow me on social media, you’ll already have seen that my latest royalties statement (which included sales up to end of July 2024), revealed that sales of the English versions of my books had passed 1,500,000 copies. Eek!
It took 4 years, 11 months and 23 books to hit that figure and I’m still pinching myself that I hit the one million in March last year, so getting to 1.5 million is definitely going to take a while to sink in.
I’ve never had a #1 selling book, I’ve never reached the #10 in the UK Kindle Chart and my books don’t sell in big numbers in the USA so I’m particularly proud of this achievement. If I ever achieved any of those three things – especially success in the USA – I’d probably keel over looking at the figures!
I'll finish by thanking my wonderful readers for making everything I've talked about today possible. I'm so grateful for all the love you've shown for the worlds I've created.
Wishing you a fabulous October.
Big hugs
Jessica xx