Cupid's Daughter - New Series

Ross Richards and Sally Fields are each other’s True Love, they just don’t know it!

Emma Valentine is just your average ordinary twenty-four year old Manhattanite, living in an apartment that makes a shoebox look spacious, barely making a living working as the cutest barista at the Grind House and, oh yeah, she’s also Cupid’s Daughter.

That’s right. Cupid. As in the guy responsible for helping everyone find their True Love.

Which means Ross and Sally are a match made in Emma’s hands, if she could only actually get them in the same room together.

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Cupid’s Daughter is a short story style series. Each issue is approximately 10,000 words or 30 pages. The first 3 issues are available right now through Kindle Unlimited!

Get them now!

Amazon US

Issue One - "Lonely Reader Looking for Love Story"

Issue Two - "Looking for that Love Connection"

Issue Three - "Lonely, But Afraid to Love"

Amazon UK

Issue One - "Lonely Reader Looking for Love Story"

Issue Two - "Looking for that Love Connection"

Issue Three - "Lonely, But Afraid to Love"

I know what you’re thinking, “Didn’t Jason already do a Cupid’s Daughter thing three years ago?” The answer is yes, of course, I did. For whatever reason, it didn’t catch on. But the idea has continued to stick with me and, like I’ve done before, I decided to take another stab at it, from a slightly different angle.

In addition to expanding my catalogue this year, I really wanted to experiment with Kindle Unlimited. A lot of other authors have found tremendous success in the program this past year and I’m hoping to come at least a little close to what they achieved. Even though this series is specifically written for the KU in mind, you can still purchase each installment for $0.99 regardless of whether or not you’re KU subscriber.

Despite the fact that Cupid’s Daughter was something I had done before, this particular incarnation was a really tough nut to crack. My wife and I started outlining this new series back in February. In my first attempt I tried to just continue from the previous book, albeit in a soft reboot fashion. I was basically going to dump all the setup from the original Cupid’s Daughter (Emma being a divorce lawyer, any potential love interests for Emma and Emma’s overall reluctance to join the family business) and just skip ahead to Emma being involved full time with the Cupid business, with a new potential love interest and her brother playing a larger supporting role. I did almost an entire issue with this setup before I ran into a brick wall. For whatever reason, it wasn’t clicking with me and if it wasn’t working for me, than it wasn’t going to work for you.

So I started over from scratch. More or less. I kept a lot of the names. Emma’s a little younger than she was the first time around and she’s not a lawyer anymore. Fiona is still her best friend. There is no more Luke and we have a couple of new characters to round out the supporting cast. I think this is a much better version of the story.

If you’ve never read the original Cupid’s Daughter, don’t worry about it. It’s not required reading. It’s like a first draft compared to this final, polished draft I’m releasing now.

There will be 3 more issues of Cupid’s Daughter in late May, early June. After that, I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’ll really depend on the level of success the series has. So if you like it, make sure you tell all of your friends!

What's Going On

So, here's what's going on right now. An update, if you will, of the various projects here at One Stray Word.

The Good News

Alex Cheradon Volume 2 is trucking along. We're on track for probably 5 total installments in this volume. There was going to be 6, but I'm making cuts so things don't seem padded out. I'm probably either just at or now approaching the halfway mark of Book 3, which still has the unfortunate title of "?????" At some point in the near future, I'll probably have to come up with a real title...

The only deadlines I have are self imposed ones and I kind of blew those. The original plan was to have the 3rd AC book out by the end of June. I was supposed to have finished writing it before my wife and I took off for our anniversary (6 years!) vacation and then do edits on it when we came back. That did not happen. So, I'm working on get back on schedule and, with any luck, I'll get it set up so that you get the last 3 AC books on a monthly-ish basis.

I had a beta reader (Thanks, Mary!) go through two of my older books, Just Dial 911 for Assistance and Explorers of the Unknown. Both books are grammatically cleaned up now. Explorers has been reissued, but I'm holding Just Dial 911 back because my wife and I really think this book could be something a lot better. So, after I'm done with the current volume of Alex Cheradon, I'm hoping to do a rewrite/expansion of Just Dial 911 into it's own volume/season. Basically, the idea would be to expand the book from a first person narrative into an ensemble cast, focusing on two or three other people from the 911 call center. I want this book to really fulfill it's original premise, which was "West Wing, but for 911 Call Centers."

My niece and I outlined the first three books of the Castle Sisters Volume 2. The plan was to start writing them in time for her birthday in November. I'm gonna try really hard to hold to that plan.

The Bad News

A couple of these you might have already guessed.

No Outlawed Love follow-up. Sorry guys, my heart's just not into it. It's probably never going to happen. Sorry.

There probably won't be anymore Cupid's Daughter, either. This book is about the closest thing to an actual bomb that I have. We had a quota, a sales threshold if you will, that we wanted to CD to reach before continuing with the series and it didn't even come close. It didn't even come into the vincity of close. We sold, like, 15 copies in 2012. And last time I checked for 2013, we'd only sold 5. Maybe it would have sold better if I had released the entire series all at once? I don't know. But it's been a horrible failure. I won't say that we'll never get anymore Cupid's Daughter books, but it's not looking good.

Reapers in Heels. Okay, this is the tough one. Again, I'm not going to say Never. I mean, I've got notes and outlines for Volumes 3 & 4 sitting on my hard drive here. I've got plans for these characters. But the series just hasn't been selling. In December 2011 when we launched RiH, One Stiletto in the Grave sold 206 copies. But then for the entirety of 2012, One Stiletto only sold 213 copies. And the numbers just went downhill from here.

Reapers in Heels 2012 Sales Numbers

And for 2013, the entire series has been in the mid to low single digits.

The point of RiH was to reach out to a larger audience. But it ain't working. I don't know what happened, but the larger audience is not picking up on it. Again, I'm not gonna say Never, but there would have to be dramatic increase in sales before we see any future volumes. This series needs to be profitable for it to continue. 

That said, if you've been following me on Facebook, though, you'll know that I've tried pitching RiH to a couple of different of comic book publishers. No luck yet, but my wife and I are definitely looking into the possibility of the series continuing in another format.

Overall, though, our book sales have taken a real dive this year. Everything's dropped into the single digits. I don't know why this is. I don't know how to fix it. It's not great. It certainly bums me out. But it is what it is.

Jon Acuff had a great post today about God's calendar vs ours, which was timely considering our frustrations over the declining book sales. Because it is very frustrating. We both work very hard on these books. But at the end of the day, you just have to leave things in God's hands. It's lesson that we need to be reminded often. My wife and I continue to pray about the books everyday and, really, that's all we can do. Which is also timely, considering our current devotional we've been studying is about praying more often. It's almost as though somebody's trying to tell me something....

So, for now, we're focusing on projects that are near and dear to me like Alex Cheradon, the Castle Sisters and Just Dial 911. Although, I do have this older sci-fi trilogy sitting on my hard drive that I've been trying to find a way to release for almost a year now. It's written, but it needs some editing and maybe the ending needs to be tweaked just ever so slightly. But otherwise, it's a complete package. I kick myself every day that goes by without it getting released. So, that's probably gonna get on the schedule somewhere.

I think that's everything. Kind of feels like I'm ending this on a downer, so, uh, here's a picture of some kittens:

Two New Books for August

First, we have the exciting conclusion to Volume One of the Castle Sisters!

Kindle US

Kindle UK

It’s the final chapter in the Castle Sister’s battle against the villainous Agent Dark and the Tancredi Group.

Truths will be uncovered.

Lies will be revealed.

The End has arrived.

New York City is under siege and Agent Dark stands at the precipice of achieving everything he’s worked for. The world is within his grasp and the only people that stand in his way are Faith and Summer Castle.

And then, we have the start of a brand new series!

Kindle US

Kindle UK

Nook

Kobo

Smashwords

iBookstore

Emma Valentine thinks she’s living her dream life. She’s a successful divorce attorney living in the heart of Manhattan and she has the attention of not one, but two very eligible and handsome bachelors.

What more could she ask for?

Emma’s Dad is Cupid, the master of True Love and the ultimate matchmaker. He’s hoping to retire soon, which means it’s time for Emma to come back to the family business.

Emma’s life is going to be turned upside down and inside out, and before she knows it, she’s going to be living a very different dream...

I'll update this post as Cupid's Daughter becomes available in the other book outlets.