Hello everyone!

For once, I’ll make a Blog post all in English.

I hope you’ll bear with me. As you know it (well, most of you do), English is not my first language. I’m French, and I proudly write M/M fiction in my language. So please, excuse my… English! 🙂

As I have a lot of English-speaking friends online, (and because I found the challenge quite interesting), I decided to translate my first book myself. Last July, A New Dream was born. What you, my readers, did then felt incredibly good to me. You talked about this book, over and over and it was soon on the best seller charts in M/M romance. Of course, lots of people can do best sellers, but it was astounding for me, as a French writer, to have achieved such a goal. And it wouldn’t have happened without you!

Based on this oh-so-fragile success, I decided to do something a bit crazy. While I would be writing the second book in the Dreams series, I would have the story translated for a double-release in September. Hmm. I probably shouldn’t have. Note to self: never do that again.

The book was doomed since the very beginning. The first translator I chose didn’t make it after chapter 7 because of her personal life getting in the way.  So, I had to find someone else. The second translator wasn’t used to being a translator in French (it was her first) and did what she could. The book was released with a delay of a month on the original schedule. That’s life…

I’m in love with Chris and Adam, my characters from A World of Dreams. If I will never forget my first, David and James from A New Dream, this second couple holds a particular place in my heart. To tell the truth, my personal life was falling apart while I was writing the book. Anyway, it went very well in French, hitting the best seller charts for a few days too. Woohoo! I thought. It will be a success in English too!

Oh my, was I wrong.

You have no idea (except if you’re a writer!) what reviews can do to an author. It can be really -truly- deeeeeeply- devastating. I was so disappointed when I read the first reviews. « I loved the first book but what happened with this one? » « There is something awkward with the phrasing. DNF. » People, when you write reviews, just be aware that someone (aka the author) is probably behind his/her computer reading it. And it FREAKING HURT!

BUT!

I’d like to thank you, yes you, readers who took the time to write a bad review. Because you made me realize that having it translated by someone else probably wasn’t the best move. That I should have done it myself, even if it would have delayed the release of the book. Some people where nice enough to tell me they liked the book, and a reviewer even wrote me a good (more like neutral) one. But no. Actually, I like it better when people are true to the text and tell if there is something wrong with the way the story is translated.

SO!

What do you do when you know something you wrote with all your heart and in which you put so much love and compassion and life and energy, receives such a bad welcome? Well, you do as Rudyard Kipling instructed in If:

« If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

[…]

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son! »

I didn’t want to take it from the beginning and do it all over again myself. So I asked a few friends around about a good editor who could bring back my book to life… My friend Amanda talked to our common friend Louis Stevens, an amazing author of M/M romance. Long story short, he introduced me to his editor, PREMA Editing.

Let me tell you something. When I saw how many changes had to be done in the book-especially in the first chapters- I understood the complains and the bad reviews. So as soon as I realized how bad it was, I hit the « unpublish » button on Amazon. Seriously, I couldn’t bear the fact that my second baby was out there, knowing it was so badly translated/edited. I don’t blame anyone. It’s more a matter of accumulation, I think. Lots of bad luck…

Anyway! A NEW TIME HAS COME! 

The book deserves a second edition. With the help of my lovely readers/ followers/friends in the M/M community, we can all make it work! Would you be okay to give me a hand and drum up some noise about the new release which should be by the end of the month?

 ARE  YOU WITH ME?

Will you be there to make the second edition known to the world? If you’re in, please know that on the release day, I’ll organize a little giveaway to win copies of the book and goodies!

Stay tuned for the next episode!

Thanks for taking the time to read my Blog post!

Love you all ♥♥♥

Alex xx