Giveaway - Oliver & Vincent from Japan

I'm holding a giveaway on the blog for a print copy of the Japenese language version of Bound by Deception/Bound to Him. Yes, it's in Japenese, and I doubt many, if any, of you can read the book. But it's cool - the back is the front for a Japenese book, and the paragraphs are in columns and are read left to right. Plus, the cover illustration is all kinds of awesome. I'm guessing that since the publisher is Prism Romance, that's why the cover has the prism-ie effect on the paper. Pretty fabulous. The guys sparkle ;)

I ordered the book from Amazon Japan, and ended up ordering a few since the shipping costs were ridiculous. So I decided to share the love and do a giveaway for a copy. It's likely the only time the boys will be in print, and I thought some readers might be interested in having a copy of Ollie and Vincent in print, even if they can't read the book.

Leave a comment on this post to enter, and please include your email address so I can contact the winner. Or you can email me at ava @ avamarch (dot) com to enter. Giveaway is open until Monday 8/15/11 at midnight, EST.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering why I needed to order copies of my own book...authors don't always get author copies from foreign pubs. Between my Ava and Evageline pen names, I've sold foreign rights to 5 countries. France is the only one who has sent author copies. Spain, Russia, Italy and Japan...apparently not so much. Since I'm impatient and didn't want to wait to see if the boys would eventually showed up on my doorstep, I ordered the books myself.

Oliver & Vincent go to Japan

Oliver and Vincent have gone to Japan! Loose Id has sold the Japenese language rights to Bound by Deception and Bound to Him. The Japenese publisher bundled both books together in one paperback. The title translates to "Noble Aroma Forbidden Love"...well, at least according to the Google-translated Amazon Japan page.

It's my 1st foreign rights sale for an Ava book, and it's very exciting. I was totally geeked when I found out about it. And the cover....it's full of awesome goodness. Love how Vincent's so commanding. He even has his whip ;)

Oliver & Vincent's jaunt to Japan distracted me for a bit, but I was able to ungeek enough to get some work done on Thief over the weekend. I finished chapter 2 and have eeked into chapter 3. I need to write a chapter a week in order to finish by the end of August. And there's no possibility to push out deadlines as Fortune Hunter and Rogues are also due this year. So I need to keep moving on Thief. If you don't see me around the interwebz much, it's because I'm busily typing away.

In other news, I have learned that goldfish are predators. We took home 4 little fish from kidlet's school at the end of the school year. Not thinking anything of it, we put them in the tank with the 4 big goldfish. Then about a week later, we noticed there were only 2 little fish swimming around and looking rather worried. Um... A day later, only 1 little fish. He was a bit bigger than his little fallen fellows, so we thought he'd be fine. Um....nope. Not fine. We now only have 4 big goldfish in the tank. No little fishes. Kidlet called the goldfish 'jerks'. I agreed with her.

Story Behind the Story - Bound to Him

Stats – Received contract offer 9/26/08. Sent in book 2/18/09. Published 4/28/09.

No, it didn’t take me 5 months to write it. I’m not that slow. *g* I had other stuff on the writing plate that needed to get done before I could get to Oliver and Vincent’s sequel. I checked my notes and from what I can tell, it took me less than 2 months to write the book. In Ava-land, that’s really fast for a 30k book.

Little known fact – The original idea for the title was Bound by Love. Before I sent the blurb to my editor, I checked around and found another book with that same title on Samhain’s Coming Soon page. So I changed the title to Bound to Him. BTW, Bound by Love (by T.A. Chase) was a very good book – I quite enjoyed it, to the point where I wasn’t miffed that I had to change my title.

Extremely little known fact – Bound to Him was the first book I contracted before I wrote it. A few days after Bound by Deception released, I sent my editor two blurbs for future book ideas. One was Bound to Him, the other was Convincing Arthur. We decided to do Bound to Him next, and within a week, I got word that the publisher wanted to contract it. I never even sent in a formal submission or a synopsis or anything. I was super surprised and super geeked that Loose Id liked BBD so much they wanted the sequel based off the blurb alone.

How did I get the idea for the book? – I knew when I was writing Bound by Deception that Oliver and Vincent would need a sequel. I couldn’t leave them without Vincent telling Oliver he loved him. So the idea for the book came from the need to get Vincent to say those three all important words to Oliver. Vincent’s stubborn and arrogant and Oliver practically worshiped Vincent for years, so I needed to run both of them through the wringer in order to get their relationship to a good, solid place. …and it was fun running them through the wringer. I *heart* angst.

If I could edit the book now, what would I change (if anything)? Add a scene with Vincent sometime during the 3 weeks after Oliver broke up with him. In my head, Oliver is on Vincent’s mind constantly during those 3 weeks, and Vincent fully comes to accept that he’s gay and that he loves Oliver. But I didn’t have any good ideas for a scene, well at least an idea that wasn’t just Vincent ‘thinking’. So instead, I just picked up with Vincent after he and Oliver had the run-in outside the theatre, and added some paragraphs to cover what I skipped. Looking back, those are 3 critical weeks for Vincent, as far as character development goes. He does a lot of growing, emotionally speaking. I should have tried harder to get more than a glimpse of them onto the page.

Will there be a sequel – Yes. *g* Just finished Bound Forever on Monday. In fact, when I got the edits for Bound to Him, my editor asked if there would be a 3rd book. It took me over a year to get to it and then write it, but I finally gave the guys their final book and tied up all the loose ends in the series.

Misc stuff – In my very first concept for the book, Oliver ended up taking full advantage of Vincent’s offer to completely put himself in Oliver’s hands at the end of the book. But as I fleshed out the book, I realized Oliver wouldn’t do it. Well…that he wouldn’t go all the way. And I don’t think Vincent would have truly enjoyed it, no matter how good Oliver would have tried to make it for him. Both guys needed to ease their way into such a change in the dynamic of the bedroom. Therefore, I knew as I was writing Bound to Him that I would end up writing Bound Forever. And hopefully readers didn’t get miffed at me when Oliver pretty much said thanks but maybe later. ;)

That's the Story Behind the Story for Bound to Him. Any questions? Ask away! *g*