Goddesses Do It For Power

By Amy Lane

 

 

So, on the one hand I’m really excited.

 

So excited.

 

Vulnerable, my very first published book—the one I put out myself, back when only losers and egomaniacs did that—is being re-released today, and I have been waiting for this forever. See, I put this book out on a whim.  In my forward, I say that this started the easy tradition of mom getting to publish a book for Christmas. That was it—my Christmas present, that turned out to be the gift that kept on giving.  My first royalty check was $26.  I spent it on yarn.  My second royalty check was $52.  I spent that one on yarn as well.  My third royalty check was $370.  Yeah, I still spent it on yarn, but the fourth one was Christmas for my kids, because you can’t knit everything.  By the time writing was my only job, I was making more money writing than I had been teaching, and it all started with this one book.

 

But this one book was flawed—the grammar and editing was non-existent, and although my protests (whines) on social media were vociferous and impassioned, the fact was that yes, the books embodied the worst of self-publishing at the time. I’m sure I could have served as an object lesson to writers like Ella Frank, about how not to put out a first self-published novel—how not to edit, how not to promote it, now not to cover it. And people still kept buying it, and loving it, and eventually my hubris and defensiveness went away, and what was left?

 

Humble gratitude and a willingness—an imperative—to put out a better product with every book I wrote.

 

I like to think that my sixth (and last) self-published book, Rampant, shows how much I learned, but in the meantime, there was still Vulnerable.  It was my flagship—and it was flawed.

 

I spent years looking for a publisher—I tried to point to the sales, to the good reviews, toward the upsurge of urban fantasy—but all anybody could see was the M/M relationship in the middle of the first-person heroine’s story, and the unconventional ending.  And after the sixth book was released—and my life took an unexpected direction—I was working on enough projects close to my heart that I didn’t pine.

 

But I still yearned.  I wanted to see my Little Goddess shine—didn’t she deserve the chance to shine?  I mean, I released a vampire/mortal/immortal triangle two years before Twilight, shouldn’t that count for something?

 

When DSP Productions offered me a chance to recover and re-edit my book, I cried.  Oh please—please let her shine.

 

And then I made a terrible, painful discovery.

 

My heart was still with my Little Goddess—but my ability had changed.

 

Oh holy carp, I was a different writer now.  I couldn’t just clean her up, could I? Shouldn’t I… like fix her? A hammer? A chainsaw? Oh hell, some more of this? Less of this? Cut it in half? But people loved it—what did they loved about it? Would they love it if I rewrote it as today’s Amy Lane as opposed to the Amy Lane of ten years ago?  Oh hell—did I have time to completely rewrite it?

 

Oh Jesus.  I wasn’t even the same person.  I couldn’t write the same book, and that was the book people fell in love with.  I was… I was going to have to leave the heart of the book as it was.

 

That was a painful realization. I’d wanted her to shine—I’d learned so much more about prose and plotting and characterization—shouldn’t she shine with all of that?

 

But the truth was, I’d already turned her loose on the world. I had, in fact, written over one million words wrapped around my Little Goddess.  I couldn’t re-write all of that—not and continue to support my family I couldn’t.

 

I was going to have to have a little faith.

 

Faith that my first book for all its flaws and all of my flaws was sound.  Faith in the people who have loved this series from the beginning. Faith that even though I was ten years younger and ten years dumber, I was still a good enough human being—and a smart enough student of the English language—to produce a sound, entertaining book.

 

And I must have dredged up some faith from somewhere, because Vulnerable is out—she has a beautiful new Anne Cain cover, a lovely forward by Mary Calmes and Damon Suede, two writers I both love and admire, and a hopefully fresh start in the world.

 

Isn’t she lovely?

 

*      *       *       *      *      *     *     *

 

 

Vulnerable

By Amy Lane

 

Little Goddess: Book One

 

Working graveyards in a gas station seems a small price for Cory to pay to get her degree and get the hell out of her tiny town. She’s terrified of disappearing into the aimless masses of the lost and the young who haunt her neck of the woods. Until the night she actually stops looking at her books and looks up. What awaits her is a world she has only read about—one filled with fantastical creatures that she’s sure she could never be.

 

And then Adrian walks in, bearing a wealth of pain, an agonizing secret, and a hundred and fifty years with a lover he’s afraid she won’t understand. In one breathless kiss, her entire understanding of her own worth and destiny is turned completely upside down. When her newfound world explodes into violence and Adrian’s lover—and prince—walks into the picture, she’s forced to explore feelings and abilities she’s never dreamed of. The first thing she discovers is that love doesn’t fit into nice neat little boxes. The second thing is that risking your life is nothing compared to facing who you really are—and who you’ll kill to protect.

 

2nd Edition

 

Available at Amazon

 

Available at DSP Publications