For Ever is now available on Wattpad!

I just made For Ever, Book 1 of The Ever Series, available on Wattpad.com. Check it out here!

To purchase Never, Book 2 in The Ever Series, on Amazon, click here.

To purchase Sever, Book 3 in The Ever Series, on Amazon, click here.

To pre-order Ever, the alternate point-of-view companion to For Ever, on Amazon, click here.

Stay tuned for teasers!

Never is available on barnesandnoble.com!

Never is (once again) available for purchase on barnesandnoble.com. Buy it here.

And stay tuned for news about Sever!

Quick update

I've been MIA for quite a while, so I wanted to give a quick update. I have been absolutely flying on a super-secret side project, which has been so fun. It's so different than The Ever Series, which probably means it's not getting published under the same name. (Can't have people buying this one thinking they're going to get The Ever Series and then getting angry that it's not!)

This project has taken longer than I first thought, but I think I'll be done within the next couple of weeks. Then, I'll go back to the third book in the The Ever Series, which was about a third of the way finished when I left it. I'm hoping that by now I'll have fresh eyes and be able to enjoy myself a little more.

Lastly, I would like to give another quick shout-out to For Ever's UK fans. You fine individuals have kept the momentum going. (And thank you so much for the lovely reviews of Never!) You've really been inspiring me to get back to the third book and get it out there. Expect big surprises, as it's been surprising me! I'm going to start trying to put together a UK-only giveaway, so keep an eye out.

It's gray and a little rainy in Portland. No surprises there! I hope everyone is well.

OH! And I nearly forgot ... silly me. I just approved the paperback version of Never, so I'll be posting links to that very soon!

CJ

Kidnapped ... by another project

Please send ransom. ;-p Kidding, kind of.

The truth is I've been writing like crazy, but unfortunately it hasn't been The Ever Series that I've been working on. I needed to take a breather from the third book, and another project that I had started a few months ago just kind of took over my life. I've been literally eating, sleeping, breathing it.

But never fear. The third book in The Ever Series is percolating in my head. I just won't have much time for it until after I find out about my jury duty coming up next month. The good news is that the paperback copy of Never will be up for sale very soon.

I promise I'll post with an update as soon as The Ever Series is in full swing again.

CJ

P.S. -- A special shout out to Hillary! I hope your writing is going well.

For Ever's new paperback is here!

I love it. But maybe that's because I've been waiting so long for it! It is so pretty. And Never is coming along soon after. (If I get lucky, it'll be up by tonight. We shall see.)

On another note, I may very well be dedicating the third book in The Ever Series to For Ever's UK fans! Again -- wow!

All right. Back to editing the third book.

Happy Monday!

The kindness of strangers

So ... I was in a bit of a funk this weekend, and I wrote a somewhat rant-filled post. My apologies. I deleted it (you guys don't need to hear me whine!), and I was reminded the very next day of how some people who we've never met go out of their way to say nice things. It does not go unnoticed! (On a semi-related note: I was standing in line at an ice cream shop in Portland this weekend, and a man passed by me and gave me the remaining balance on his gift card. It was a tiny amount, of course, but it felt good to be in the right place at the right time. Kindness travels.)

Now, in my aforementioned (deleted) post, I talked about taking a little break to work on another side project, which is tonally way different than The Ever Series. Well, last week said project was sort of stealing my will to work on the third book ... but fear not. I'm going to try to do both at once. And if I can't manage it, I will go back to my first love -- Ever, of course!

In other news, the proofs of For Ever and Never's new paperbacks are ordered and coming soon, so they will be available for purchase in the near future. So excited about that!

Lastly, the first seven chapters of For Ever are up on Amazon for free right now. They'll be available for a day ... or maybe five. I haven't decided yet. If you have a friend who might enjoy the book, but he or she wants to try it first, this is a great time to check it out.

Hugs to all of you who have left the wonderful reviews of Never (and For Ever) on Amazon. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

More soon!

CJ

Beautiful

The paperback versions of For Ever and Never will be available shortly -- and this time I mean it! So, if you're sentimental (like me), you might want to order a copy of the first book with For Ever's original tree. (Otherwise ... Hillary, you're probably going to own one of the only originals! LOL)

Now, let me just say ... The new artwork for the paperbacks is gorgeous. My designer went above and beyond with beautiful detail, and I'm really looking forward to holding the proofs in my hands. (But in all honesty ... I just want to see Ever's bright green eyes staring back at me from the cover of Never. An e-book, sad to say, just can't do justice to his smoldering stare.)

Files will be uploaded soon. Then I will be ordering proofs. And finally they will be available to anyone who wants to hold Ever ... I mean For Ever and Never ... in both hands. (The books will be available via Amazon and CreateSpace for the United States and in Europe, and I'll post the associated links when both books are up for order!)

CJ

For Ever and Never available for Nook

At long last, both books are up on the Nook!

Get  For Ever on your Nook!

Get Never on your Nook!

Tidbits

It seems like forever (no pun intended) since Never went live on Amazon. I guess a lot's happened in my little world since then, and I haven't quite caught up. Quitting coffee over the weekend (l-o-o-o-o-n-g story) didn't help matters. :-/

On to some news ... First, I'm working on getting Never up on Barnes & Noble. Will post when I do. And I'm also looking into Smashwords. Last but not least, I'm also hoping to have the paperback versions of For Ever and Never available with their spiffy new covers.

 Even more exciting ... I'm also working on the third book in The Ever Series. I'm roughly a quarter of the way through the first draft. The question is: can anyone guess the title?

For those of you who have purchased Never, I hope you're enjoying it! Got my first review on Amazon, which made me absolutely giddy with happiness since I now know for sure that one person out there really loved For Ever's sequel! And like I said before, sometimes I think I'm writing for just one person. I still hope that a lot of people out there love Never. I had a great time writing it. And the end totally made me cry, but I cried at the end of For Ever, too. I do that a lot, I guess. ;-)

Last but not least, I'm working on some ideas for a raffle. It all depends on how it goes with the paperback copies. However, if it doesn't look like those will be finalized before the end of the year, first I'll scream. Then I'll probably just raffle off an Amazon GC. Those of you who are visiting the blog regularly deserve a little holiday season bonus!

Dark and stormy looking in Portland, Oregon. Hmm. Guess it's time to spend the next three months writing the third book. Title coming soon!

Question for Barnes and Noble readers

Never is officially, officially available for purchase on Amazon (Yay! I beat my projected 2013 release date by a mile!), and right now For Ever is for sale on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Now, here's the thing ... I've been going back and forth between either releasing Never on Barnes & Noble or making both titles exclusive to Amazon.

For anyone who has purchased For Ever on B&N already, are you interested in Never? Let me know: author (at) cjvalles (dot) com

And those of you who already have Never in your hands, thank you a million times for your support! It means a lot, and I hope you enjoy the roller coaster ride!

Never is up on Amazon!

Buy it here!

Will Never come out this weekend?

Okay, so the title of this post might be the biggest teaser ever, but the answer to that question is: I sure hope so! As I type this, the man behind the scenes is running through the result of my last fit of editing (which happened to increase the length of For Ever's sequel by at least 15 pages). Plus, I told him if he doesn't hurry up, that I'm going to post his e-mail address. ;-) No. Actually, I just went and harassed him again, and he said it's looking quite possible that he'll finish with my edits today.

Which means ... All the pieces are in place. The cover is done, the final edits are this close to being tweaked/incorporated. So, please cross your fingers for me, and I'll give another status report shortly.

If Never does get published on Amazon, it will likely be at 10:30 at night tomorrow (Sunday), the same way I published For Ever -- full of nerves, excitement, regret, and nausea, making it available Monday at the earliest. If it gets delayed, I'll aim for next weekend. But I really, really hope that Never will be released sooner rather than later!

Yep, totally nerves, excitement, and nausea. (No regret, yet!) Maybe that means I'll actually get Never out this weekend (way earlier than my projected February 2013 date) ... or I'll just have a monumental freakout! One or the other.

Stay tuned!

CJ

The perils of editing (plus a teaser!)

Okay, my brain is a little on the scrambled side, so I can't remember if I mentioned it on the blog, but last week -- through the entire weekend -- I reviewed Never. It was supposed to be my last read through. Um, yeah. This is the problem with me and editing. ... I ended up tacking on an addition 15 pages or so to the book! Lots and lots of red track changes. This is how it went: Read two sentences on my Kindle. Rewrite two sentences on my computer. And so on for 300-plus pages.

The good news is that during my tinkering, I caught some additional errors -- I'm amazed at what I find when I'm reading on the Kindle as opposed to MS Word -- and ended up adding another scene at the end and drawing out a couple of the other scenes.

And let's just say that I also added some more spice. ;-) Air conditioning was definitely necessary by the time I finished.

The bad news is that I have to have someone double-check my track changes, because even if I re-read everything twice while I'm editing, there are always some mistakes that my tired brain doesn't catch! When I first started editing last week, I thought I was actually going go get the book up on Amazon over the weekend. Turns out I was being a little bit ambitious. No worries, though. I am still working as hard as I can to get the book out early!

To For Ever's super fans (I think you know who you are!), you guys are the best! Thanks again for all the encouragement. Never will be in your hands soon!

And now ... a little taste of spice:

Never's teaser of the week

I hope everybody enjoyed the first chapter of Never! I'm still working on getting the book out early, so stay tuned!

Now, here's the regular old weekly teaser ...

Never: Chapter 1

Like I've said before ... I have no patience. And on that note, here's the first chapter of Never.

COVER REVEAL: Never

Drum roll, please. At long last, here it is ... Never's cover (after the jump). I, for one, am in love with Ever. Let me know what you think in the comments!

And ... check back soon for the first chapter of Never!

CJ

Yay!

For Ever's new (finally finalized!) cover will go up on Amazon tonight! So pretty!

Plus, my editor is halfway through Never. Believe me, if I could get out and push the proverbial car to make things go faster, I would!

For Ever's new cover is almost done AND ...

YAY! My designer tells me that I'll be getting the draft artwork for Never's cover tonight.

Deep breath.

This means that I'll be getting my first look at Ever. Well, not the first look. After all, I was the one who spent hours and hours searching for the images to use on the covers. That said, I'm hoping that my designer has been able to work some magic on the pictures I found since they didn't fit perfectly with what I had in my head. Ever is perfect, after all, and it's hard to find perfection. Ultimately, I had to make some compromises, given that unlike For Ever's re-design, which just fell into place, Never's cover required some extra elbow grease.

Okay. Now, I am officially holding my breath until my designer sends me the first look at Never's cover.

You guys are the best!

Sometimes during this little self-publishing journey, I've felt like I'm on an island. Then this week, I received a note from another fan of For Ever. You guys are the best!!! Truly. I appreciate you taking a little time out of your day to say something nice! After all, you are the ones pushing me on this uphill battle. I can shout until I'm hoarse, I can tweet all I want, but people who enjoyed For Ever and are looking forward to Never (big shockers to come!) will be the ones who make the difference in the life of this book series.

That said, every time I get a piece of positive feedback, I want to post all the teasers for Never in one shot. I'm restraining myself, mostly because I've still got a ways to go. I just finished last night cleaning up the current draft and it's now been sent off to the next pair of eyes, which is one more pair of eyes than I had reading For Ever.

I also have some other news that I should probably wait to reveal, but I have zero patience -- so here it is: I am currently (very early) in the process of getting For Ever's cover redesigned. I'll post more about that as it develops. I really wish I could share some of the beautiful images I've been looking at. I want to use all of them, so I guess this series can never (tee hee) end. Let me know what you think about a cover redesign -- in the comments or at author@cjvalles.com.

And lastly, I have started the third book in The Ever Series. I hope to make some major headway on that as soon as I can make sure my schedule is clear for a strict write-a-thon.

All right, I'm weak. One more itty-bitty quote from Never ... juicier ones to come!

*** Random Never quote ***

While I was away ...

You know that feeling when you leave on a short trip and come back ... and it feels like you've been gone forever? (No pun intended!) I totally just had that! Went to a wedding in Las Vegas for a family member, and let me tell you ... Las Vegas, Nev. and Portland, Ore. could not be more different. It was sweltering, perfectly clear and in the 100s in Vegas; it was raining and in the 60s or 70s when I got back to Portland. Two totally different planets.

While I was gone, the August blog tour with SupaGurl marched on with reviews and guest posts (including my tentative casting of For Ever as a movie). The reviews were (mostly) good, though I've found over and over that you can't please everyone -- and if you try, it won't work out!

To those of you who "liked" For Ever on Facebook -- you guys are awesome and I hope you're looking forward to Never. By the way, my test reader is about five pages from finishing and says the sequel is (even) better than the first.

Here's a recap of the goings on while I was in Vegas:

 The Book Lover's Report (long-ish interview)

For The Love of Film and Novels (review and guest post with For Ever's fantasy cast)

waiting on sunday to drown (review) 

***Singing and Reading in the Rain*** (review)