Jade Varden Official Blog

The day of Judgment is coming. Take a peek at the trailer to find out what the fourth and final book in the Deck of Lies series has in store for you... Check the blog every day this weekend for announcements about Judgment (Deck of Lies, #4), and get the book as soon as it's released!  

The holiday season is a special time of year, and plenty of writers have used that to their advantage. Stories about Santa Claus, believing and the holiday spirit are always going to be popular. But few are destined to gain the sort of love and popularity enjoyed by Miracle on 34th Street , one of my all-time favorites. You've probably seen the movie, but what do you know about the book? The Book Valentine Davies wrote Miracle on 34th Street in 1947, as a companion novelette for the film released the same year. It was actually published by 20th Century Fox, who also made the film, but it's managed to stand on its own and has sold millions of copies. The book introduces readers to Doris Walker, a rather cold career woman who works for Macy's. She's managing personnel for the famous Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and must fire the Santa Claus she's hired at the last minute when he turns up drunk. She hires bystander Kris to take his place, an elderly...

The fourth and final book in the Deck of Lies series, Judgment, is nearly here! The book will be available in online bookstores soon. Now, you'll know what to look for. The cover has been officially revealed! Cashing Out Do I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? How can I, when the truth will destroy us all? Now that I've started telling lies, I can't stop. Not until all this is over, and I'm free of the family that never felt like mine. Maybe it's wrong. Maybe I'm a bad person. But it's definitely the only way I'm ever going to escape them. I have to take this opportunity to end things between us once and for all, no matter what it takes. Don't I? And here's a little taste of Judgment (Deck of Lies, #4). You won't find this brief excerpt anywhere else!  “It’s fine, Rain,” Asher assured me maybe four minutes later. He’d excused himself to leave the room, no doubt to talk to...

Food and books go well together. When you're nice and full from your Thanksgiving feast, there's nothing as sweet as curling up with a good book. They seem to encourage snacking, and sometimes a book is so good it's difficult to pull one's eyes away to bother with looking at dinner. Why not cut right to it, and add food directly into your books?  Even Characters Have to Eat Everybody eats. It's one of the universal truths that ties all human beings together. I live in Kentucky, in the United States, and passionately love books and basketball. But when it comes to food, I'm not so different from the boy working on a farm that has no electricity in Asia  -- because I eat it, too. And that brings us right back to why you want to add food to your books.  Realism Anything that makes your characters feel more real to readers is a good thing, and there's nothing like food to do that for you. Have your character eating pizza with friends or stoppin...

Exposure is the best way to sell books, because if people can't find you they definitely can't buy. As a self-published author, you've probably got accounts on all those social media sites. You may already have a blog, even a website, to promote your writing and your books. But there's more you can start doing if you want to start getting exposure. Becoming Noticeable Blogging and staying active in social media, particularly book-centric sites like Goodreads , is a great way to get exposure for yourself as an author and by extension, your books. But you can always take things up to the next level, too.  First, you've got to identify what sort of author you are. If you write in a specific genre , you've got a good starting point. If you're a short story author, you're already ahead of the game.  Expose Yourself Writing articles for magazines, professional blogs and literary journals is a great way to get exposure among a reading audi...

Every author has to have a bio somewhere, sometime, for something. Just about every website is going to want one, bloggers are bound to ask, and even Amazon expects you to write a little something about yourself when you self-publish your book.  Who Am I?  It's a little task, and for many authors it's terrifying. What does one say about oneself? The author bio is another little piece of promotion, and it shouldn't be overlooked. I've literally purchased books based on the strength of an author bio. You want to come up with something standard to use, 50 to 150 words, that is interesting but professional, attention-getting but low-key, suggestive without being pushy...and written in the third person.  It's a whole lot to ask for, and frankly I find it to be one of the more undesirable tasks that come with being an author. Some people can afford to hire publicists to do this sort of thing for them, but the self-published author has got to write their own ...

Why do some books succeed, where others fail? A lot of professionals say it's all in the marketing. When it comes to budget, the big publishing houses probably have the advantage over you as a self-published author. But you are your own best possible advocate. And when it comes to gumption, you've got the marketing edge. Use it well by creating press releases. It's totally free for you to do so. Hear Ye, Hear Ye Press releases are created for any number of events, products and people, but only for one reason : promotion. Think of it as a text-based advertisement. Instead of moving video or a stunning graphic image, you're using words, and only words, to sway the audience. Many authors excel at writing press releases because they are completely word-based. Any writer can figure out how to write a press release, because they all follow a pretty simple formula. Master the formula, and then start working on your rhetoric. All press releases begin with the l...

Even if you haven't read the books, or seen the movies, you've heard the name Nancy Drew. She's a famous book detective, and through the years she's been edited, adapted and re-packaged endlessly so she can keep on being relevant. And it's worked, because we all still know who she is -- and she's been a teenager since the 1930s. The Books Nancy Drew was born on the page in 1930, to be exact, with The Secret of the Old Clock . This first book spawned an entire series that's going on 83 years old. The many, many books in the series are written under the name Carolyn Keene, a person who does not exist. Several ghostwriters have been responsible for crafting Nancy's adventures over the years. Ghostwriters were also used to change those stories. Nancy underwent her first big re-branding in 1959, to eliminate racist stereotypes and other subject matter that didn't make for appropriate reading in those times of Civil Rights. Drew changed agai...