Vanessa Is Finally FREE! #giveaway #FreeBooks #KindleBargain

September 29, 2016Romantic SuspenseAlice Orr

AliceOrr_AVillainForVanessa_HR Get your free copy of A Villain for Vanessa. Available for 5 days only – Sept. 29 thru Oct. 3 https://www.amazon.com/ebook/dp/B01FFZEZSW …

What Readers Say about A Villain for Vanessa by Alice Orr. “Tightly written suspense wields tension, shifts and twists that don’t let you look away.” “I was gripped before I was off the first page. That’s a writers’ big gift at work.” “The mystery gets tighter and tighter while the romance gets hotter and hotter.” “Gains power like a train descending a mountain, surprising at each unforeseen turn.” “After this story, I have become an Alice Orr fan.” “I’m grateful she’s writing in series.”

A Villain for Vanessa – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 4 – A story of tangled roots and tormented love. Two families are shaken to their roots. Vanessa Westerlo must find her roots. Bobby Rizzo is torn between Vanessa and his true roots. They are all tormented by love, both past and too present. Meanwhile a man has been murdered. And that is the most tormented tangle of all. Alice Orr is known for “Delicious Suspense spiced with Romance.” She does it again in A Villain for Vanessa.

A Villain for Vanessa features the Kalli family and the fortunate people who find safety and welcome at the Kalli homestead. A Wrong Way Home is Book 1 of the series and A Year of Summer Shadows is Book 2. A Vacancy at the Inn is Book 3 and introduces the Miller family. Find all of Alice’s books at http://www.amazon.com/Alice-Orr/e/B000APC22E.

I’m grateful for the generous reviews that have greeted A Villain for Vanessa and made me feel even more at home in the world of series writing I love. Diving deeper with each book into the town and families and deadly intrigues that are the core of the series is an adventure for me. My sincere thanks to everyone who has supported me. I love you all. I hope you will love A Villain for Vanessa too.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

Going #Home Again. Can We? Should We? @AliceOrrBooks #RomanticSuspense #MFRWauthor

August 29, 2016Great ReadMonday Blogs, NovelAlice Orr

Going Home image Every story is a conversation with myself as the author and myself as a person. I usually don’t recognize what that conversation is about until I’m at least halfway through the writing. Sometimes, not until I’ve typed “The End.” After publishing four books in my current series, I discover the conversation for me is often about going home. Or about not going home.

In A Wrong Way Home – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 1, I knew early on in the storytelling that Kara’s dilemma has been my own dilemma for decades. Can we go home again? Can we return to the place that birthed us and nurtured us? Or, as is sometimes the case, the place that failed to nurture us. The answer is more difficult when we’ve had a hometown experience like Kara’s, the non-nurturing kind with hurtful memories to go with it.

For Kara the dark memory pits have to do with two things, her family and her past relationships with men. She doesn’t want to fall into either of those pits again. Yet, she can’t seem to stay away from Matt, even though she knows for sure that seeing him again will mean heartache for her. He is like the sore tooth she can’t keep from flicking with her tongue, maybe to make certain the pain is still there. Or, more accurately, to make sure the strong feelings are still there. Isn’t that true of most of us at one time or another?

For example, we can’t seem to stop ourselves from signing up for the high school reunion. We shop long and hard for the perfect outfits to display ourselves at our best advantage. We have our hair styled. We struggle to lose weight. We’ve got unfinished business back there. Battlefields we didn’t conquer the first time around. The mean girls. The bad boys. The warm friendships that went cold. We long to write a more satisfying ending to at least some of those chapters.

In my latest novel, A Villain for Vanessa – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 4, recognizing the Going Home theme came later rather than sooner, probably because the question isn’t so much, “Can Vanessa go home?” as it is “Why must Vanessa go home?” She left Riverton, the remote North Country town that is the setting for this series, when she was so young she barely recalls the place. She fled across the continent long ago with her mother, who now warns Vanessa about her plan to return.

“Don’t be so sure they’ll want you when you get there,” Mom ominously intones, but Vanessa doesn’t listen.

There are clichés for what she does instead. She makes herself the cat whom curiosity might kill. She tempts a fate unimaginable in her wildest dreams, or nightmares. She wakes a sleeping tiger, and her curious kitty could be outmatched by this jungle cousin. She is told more than once, “There be dragons!” in the hidden territory of the past and monsters in the secret depths of its perilous waters. Still, she risks all, including her heart and her life, because there’s a mysterious man in the mix, plus a murderer.

Wouldn’t you do the same if you had a lost family to find? How many times do we poke at a live electrical socket for the sake of family? Especially the factions of family everything, including our own common sense, warns us to avoid. I confess to a headful of singed follicles and a fistful of scarred fingertips from my own forays. There lies the most powerful lure of home. Family. The family of our blood. The family of our hearts. The family of our wishful yearning. We can’t resist it, not Kara nor Vanessa nor you nor me.

What tangled tales those misadventures weave. Tangled and fascinating. So much so I can’t stop telling them and going home to do it, too. Did I forget to mention I was born and raised in a remote North Country town?

A Villain for Vanessa – Riverton Romantic Suspense Book 4 and my other books are available from Amazon HERE and from most other online book retailers at their websites. A Wrong Way Home – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 1 is a FREE EBOOK there too. Enjoy!

Alice Orr –

https://www.aliceorrbooks.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Alice-Orr/e/B000APC22E/

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http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/

http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/

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What About Guest Blogging? Should I Bother? @AliceOrr #blogging #IAN1

July 23, 2016Promo TipbloggingAlice Orr

I recently completed a month-long blog tour. Fifteen guest blog post stops, designed and scheduled by me. I’d previously decided to give up on guest blogging as an effective and worthwhile marketing technique. I’d done it for the three previous books in my indie published Riverton Road Romantic Suspense series, and I had no evidence of much response.

Then a colleague with lots more marketing experience than I possess threw my own long-time mantra back at me. “Do It Anyway!” she said. What were her top reasons for that advice? Being out there on social media. Possible name recognition and visibility. My recent blog tour has brought another reason even more front and center for me. Guest posting establishes relationships with bloggers.

The prevailing wisdom is that we should research our particular writing niche in search of the bloggers with the largest number of Followers and guest post with them. Which makes a lot of sense, if you’re already at least somewhat established in that publishing niche of yours. If you’re not, the reality is this. Many of those most-followed blogger types aren’t interested in featuring as-yet-unknown or beginning writers.

My response to this reality would be another resounding “Do It Anyway!” Because why? Because the future lies ahead, and we have no idea what it may hold. For example, on this fourth tour I pretty much accidentally tumbled onto a blog site with 3.5 million followers and a generous host. She not only featured me as a guest author on her blog, she also recommended me to another blogger with a similarly large following.

The result? I’ve received more attention on social media, especially Twitter, for my new book A Villain for Vanessa, than for any of the previous books in the series. Plus I learned things I need to know. Like about Triberr and how it works and what I should do about it. Like about how to vary my posts so that they’re not just an excerpt from the book/the cover art/the story summary/my bio/my photo/my social media links/my buy links. The same old same old format.

Another plus is those relationships I mentioned. Not just relationships with the big-influencer bloggers, but with every blogger who hosted me, no matter what his/her Follower stats might be. Every one of them has done me the huge favor of featuring me and my work on their blog site. Every one of those relationships deserves to be nurtured. I’ve already begun nurturing.

How am I doing that? I follow their blogs. I comment on the posts I find there. I promote these bloggers’ new books across my social media network. I’m even buying those new titles and reviewing them on Amazon and Goodreads. You may think this is a lot of work, but nurturing relationships has always required effort. Consider it an investment in your future.

Taking my first steps on this pay-it-forward-with-mutual-support path has taught me another important lesson as well. I am simply having fun. [This post is adapted from a comment I made recently on the ALLi Blog.]

A Villain for Vanessa – Riverton Romantic Suspense Book 4 and my other books are available from Amazon HERE and from most other online book retailers at their websites.