Bound for the Hills

by Rain Trueax

There was a time when I never wrote about my books in this blog. There was a reason for that. I thought if I mentioned them, readers would take it as me trying to sell them. I also thought-- those that do-- do. Those that don't, talk/write about it. Silly reasoning but for years, I didn't talk about my writing even to friends. A few knew I wrote but most probably did not. None of my friends at the time wrote or had interest in writing. Most didn't read romances if they read books of other sorts.

Eventually, that changed some with this blog but still not nearly to the level writing/marketing encompasses my life and thinking. Conversations in the middle of the day with Ranch Boss often revolve around a marketing aspect, which makes sense as he's the main marketer behind my books and has been for several years (one reason more books are sold today than back then). When I wake in the morning, it's often with dreams that revolved around some aspect of writing.

A dream example was this week: I find a page where I can look at how much money each of the writers I know have already made that month. It turns out to be in the many thousands (and it probably is the case, given what they've revealed other places). In the dream, I feel a mix of pressure to do more to get my books seen and jealousy that they made so much. 

Finding a page like that would not make me happy, and there might even be one. IF so, I won't be reading it. *fingers crossed*. Well, I might, but it'd be happier if I didn't as comparing yourself to others, in anything, is always a lose/lose.

So for Saturday blogs, for a while, I am going to write about writing/marketing.  I hope it will be of interest to those who come, but understand it might not. I won't be doing this hoping more books will be sold from here (links are all listed alongside lol) but instead with the hope that it might inspire others to give writing a try or if they already write, ideas on how they could get their books out there and what that involves. I've learned a thing or two after getting into this in 2012-- some from my own experiences and some from what others have shared (writers who I looked up in the dream). It will also be because this is something important in my life.


This has been my longest new books dry spell in more years than I can remember.  In the past, I had always been writing on a book but not for the last year. I am not sure if there's a reason for it. But, no new books doesn't mean nothing happening on the books as I wrestle with better ways to have them seen. 

For books that aren't doing well, regularly I look at their covers to see if they are helping to tell the story of what a reader will find inside. Covers have to be a mix of what readers will like but also what I find true to the book. Because I do all my own covers, I likely change them more than if I paid someone else to do them.

An example is Bound for the Hills. I first wrote and published it in 2016 with great hope for it. It had a plot I liked and was set in country that I've enjoyed spending time. So what went wrong? Its first cover is below.

It's odd as the first four books in the Hunters Moon series have done pretty well (for me) but the second four not so much. Recently, I've adjusted how they are presented to be sure readers understand that these books are connected through characters and the ongoing history of Arizona, though each stands alone with an ending and its own plot. For Bound for the Hills, the cover above was first. When that didn't seem to work, it was moved to him. 

Now, it's going to be her and the Central Arizona location. We also changed the series name to emphasize that it's a romance and took out the O'Brians and Taggerts thinking maybe readers didn't see that these book flowed onward with shared secondary characters. 

The jury is still out on her alone.

Could readers lack of enthusiasm be for its title? It can't change if that's the case. It's too important to the theme of the book as it stands for both the heroine's and hero's journey. 

A college teacher in San Francisco, Wilhelmina takes a summer sabbatical and heads to the mountains to write what she hopes will be the great American novel. She wants to break away from the dime novels that paid for her advanced education (where women were making headway at that time). Still healing from her father's death, she wants a total change of scenery from the world she's experienced-- San Francisco and universities. She also wants to test herself against the wilderness with the cabin she chooses.

As for him, well, he sees himself on path toward death. He's been living a dangerous life as law officer from a family well known as outlaws-- though he's never been one.  His life has been made even more dangerous by a series of outlaw dime novels with his name as the hero. As a distraction from his annoyance at the unwanted fame, he does his sister-in-law (heroine in Echoes from the Past) a favor to head for the mountains to check on her university friend.

Since this is a romance, when these two come together, combustion happens, secrets are revealed, but this is so much more than a love story. She learns to cook for the first time, following an old recipe book (new at the time), acquires a dog, learns about life beyond the Ivy Walls where she's felt protected, works on recreating her writing (with limited success), but also has a journal her father kept, which she is trying to decode. What message was he trying to leave before he died?

So, what's the reason it's had so much less acceptance than the first Arizona historical romances? Beautiful country, two people trying to get to know each other and then falling in love. There's a longtime friend (who'd like to be more) as well as a killer after her, one she has no idea is an enemy. There's some nature, some adventure and a shootout, well that could be turnoff to some. 

Last week, I had someone buy it and immediately return it. What would cause a reader to dump it that early in the book? Or was it one of the thieves, who take books, copy them to their hard-drive and return-- thanks to Amazon's generous return policy? There is no way to know for sure, but it does make me wonder when returns happen so soon-- and especially no sex that early in the book or, for that matter, no violence-- yet. 

Well, with my latest cover change, I think it'll stay as it is-- although, of course, even in 1905 some might think a grown woman should not wear her hair loose, but some could when they were in the wilderness or wanting to feel more free. How readers of historicals see it... that's a mystery to me.

Update: I decided the expression was wrong. Today I put up this one-- which will take a while to show up online, but it's better for what the heroine is feeling. Getting the right characters and then having them suit readers-- that's the trick.