Romance

I love Romance.

I write Romance.

Not in the sense of genre romance, but Romance in the sense of an affirmation of the centrality of the heart in human experience. Of the perils of our alienation from nature, and because Romance gives us a break from the sheer awfulness of life (Byron: “And if I laugh at any mortal thing, Tis that I may not weep.”)

My question is: can novels help people learn better (learn again?) how to think?

Yes, reading novels is a form of escapism.

But can they draw people into stories and then use those stories to train people, not what to think (blech) but how?

I hope so.

I’m so horrified by how poorly people think …

Fo Fum Flarey by Kirsten Mortensen

Out now! Book 2 of my Marion Flarey series :)

Available on Amazon for Kindle or Print, or click here to browse other e-formats.

New novel, Fo Fum Flarey, available for preorder

Those of you who know me personally know that this past year has been incredibly difficult. Yeah, I know I’m not alone. COVID etc. But in addition to the social upheaval, my personal life was turned upside down as well. First, my dad passed in April. And now my mom is gone, too. January 9.

Fo Fum Flarey by Kirsten Mortensen
She’s got her prince. If she can figure out how to keep him…

I am not even sure how to process it, to be honest. Looking forward to when this is all something that happened instead of something that is still happening.

In the meantime, I have been getting some writing done, although work has been a bit slower than I would have liked.

Once Upon a Flarey Tale came out last August.

Now the second book in the series, Fo Fum Flarey, is available.

Here’s the description of Fo Fum Flarey:

A tale about love, life choices — and how trusting the wisdom of old stories is sometimes the best choice of all.

Marion Flarey has finally found him. Fletcher Beal.
Her Prince.
And when you find your rich, handsome Prince, everything is settled, right? The fairy tales say so! You live happily ever after. No more questions, no more stress.
But as much as Marion loves those wise old tales, there’s a limit to their magic. How is she supposed to make her place in her new prince’s world — especially when Fletcher is always busy, flying around the country, exploring new domains and adding conquests to his kingdom?
The stories don’t say.
To make matters worse, her family is gripped by stories of their own — and Marion can’t figure out what’s going on. Her mother is distracted and unhappy. What secrets is she hiding? And then Marion’s brother, Ace, shows up in town — and Marion learns why he left.
He’s a thief.
He stole from their family.
Worse yet? He stole from Marion’s prince.
Can Marion unravel her family’s secrets?
Can she rescue her brother?
Can she put her broken family back together again?
And should she even try?
Or will her family’s crazy problems sabotage Marion’s life, robbing her of the one thing she wants most: a happy future with her sweet, rich, sexy prince?

Novels for you…

Featured

Extraordinary favor

COMING SOON!

He thought she was the one.
She asked him for a favor.
He agreed.
And that’s when things began to get truly strange...

An Extraordinary Favor of Unusual Proportions
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An Extraordinary Favor of Unusual Proportions
Once Upon a Flarey Tale
Once Upon a Flarey Tale by Kirsten Mortensen

Meet Marion Flarey.

She believes in Fairy Tales.
Her new apartment?
It's a Tower.
Does that mean her Prince is on his way?

Once Upon a Flarey Tale
Available on Amazon for print or Kindle, or browse here for other e-formats.

1st place 2020 Incipere Award for Women's Fiction, Clean, Once Upon a Flarey Tale by Kirsten Mortensen
Fo Fum Flarey
Fo Fum Flarey by Kirsten Mortensen

She's Back!

She's got her prince.
Finally.

IF she can figure out
how to keep him...

Fo Fum Flarey
Book 2 of my Marion Flarey series.

Happily Flarey Ever?
Happily Flarey...Ever? by Kirsten Mortensen

Now available!

She's lost two Princes.

But Fairy Tales teach the power of threes--and Marion's third Prince has suddenly reappeared.

Does this mean Marion will finally find her Happily Ever After?

Happily Flarey...Ever?
Book 3 of my Marion Flarey series.

Libby
When Libby Met the Fairies and her Whole Life Went Fey by Kirsten Mortensen

Oh, Libby...

She sees things that don't exist.

Her boyfriend thinks she's crazy.

And then?
The Internet found out.

When Libby Met the Fairies
And Her Whole Life Went Fey

Available on Amazon for print or Kindle, or browse here for other e-formats.

Character Tool
Character Tool for Novelists

Are you a writer?

I built this guided notebook originally for my own use.
Now you can try it, too.

"It helped me keep the characters organized...I definitely recommend it."

"Helped shape my characters and their backgrounds. There should be more like this."

"I loved the first copy I got so much I got another one for another work in progress."

Character Tool for Novelists
$7.99 on Amazon (print only).

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The French Emerald now an ebook (and still free)

Serial novel. Sweet, funny, fast-paced — perfect to read with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine!)

I’d been planning on doing this for some time, and with the pandemic and all I finally got around to it :)

The French Emerald is now available as an ebook. Here’s the Amazon link.

You can also get it for Nook, Apple Books, and Kobo.

Also: it’s free :)

Enjoy and let me know what you think!

About online romance scams…

I happened to come across an article in The South China Morning Post (global media yeah) titled “Huge explosion in online romance scams in Hong Kong in 2018.”

If you’ve read my online serial novel The French Emerald, keep going.

If you haven’t, this might spoil things for you, so if you are at all fond of #chicklit or light readin’ fiction in general, click here to read the novel first (it won’t take long, it’s really more of a novella) then come back :) Continue reading

The French Emerald. My (free, for now!) serial novel

Serial novel. Sweet, funny, fast-paced — perfect to read with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine!)

My serial novel, The French Emerald, launched on March 4th.

I am enjoying this project so much. I love that my readers are enjoying it. I love it when I get emails saying, “help, I missed a week, where’s the link again?” I love finding new readers who read through all the past chapters to catch up :)

If you haven’t joined the fun, click here to get started.

The book has 43 chapters in all, and there are plenty of new twists to come. Enjoy and drop me a note to let me know what you think :)

UPDATE: All chapters are now online and free for you to read — just click the link above :)

Looking back: the first 6 weeks of The French Emerald serialized novel

The French Emerald, Serial Novel by Kirsten Mortensen

Serial novel. Sweet, funny, fast-paced — perfect to read with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine!)

Six weeks.

Hard to believe!

But that’s how long it’s been since the release of Chapter 1 of my new serial novel, The French Emerald.

It’s been an interesting experiment. I’ve been pushing notifications of new chapters out to my email list and on the Tuesday Serial Linky aggregator here. The book is also running in some regional newspapers (please say “hi” in the comments if you found me that way!)

If you haven’t seen any of the story yet and would like to take a peek, you can start on chapter 1 here.

The most unexpected aspect of doing all this? How complicated it is to set up all the files.

Mind you, I completed the entire novel before I published the first chapter. There are 43 chapters in all — and each chapter has a reminder of last week’s chapter and a teaser for the next week. So even before I put the first one out, I was dealing privately with questions about managing 43 files in a way that would let me tee them up for week-by-week release–not to mention help me keep them all straight =0

That, it turns out, was the easy part. Year 2018 and it’s still a PIA, if I may be blunt! to transfer formatted text across apps. I wrote the book in Word, and it’s impossible to paste it into WordPress without having to re-do the formatting. (Maybe if you use localized formatting it would work, but I use Styles, because in theory that will make it easier later to import the book into InDesign for print. So my Word files come over to WP with zero formatting.) For my email version (using Mailchimp for that) I have to copy/paste and reformat again.

Then there’s the links, since all the chapters in every version have to be cross linked so people can move from one chapter to the next. I just now realized some of the links in the first few chapters of the website version were broken. Sorry if you ran into that — fixed now :/

And then there’s the scheduling! It’s a lot easier to write a post, like this one, and hit “publish.” With the serial novel, I’m prepping chapters in batches and scheduling their release. So I live in terror* of accidentally releasing chapters out of order, or tweeting a chapter link before it’s officially published.

All the same, I’m enjoying it.

And I believe the serialized novel is poised for a resurgence. Microfiction, baby. Let’s do this thing.


*Well, okay, maybe not terror, exactly. More a state of being resigned to constant low-level anxiety. hahahahahaha

Countdown to Launch: The French Emerald

The French Emerald, by Kirsten Mortensen

It’s a mystery! It’s a romance! It’s a … serial novel? =O

I have written a serial novel.

I have written a serial novel. I’ll be publishing on my site, one chapter per week.

The first chapter debuts March 4.

I’ll post more about the how’s and why’s at some point.

But for now, please click here for the teaser copy and how you can play along :)

UPDATE: All 43 chapters are now online and free to read! Click here to start with Week 1.

Fresh Face for Can Job :)

A New Year, and a new look for one of my favorite novels :)

(Like I can really choose a favorite! Hah.)

The goal: see if a different look can help me position the novel more effectively. So much of Can Job’s plot hangs on what it’s like to work in corporate marketing, and yes, the novel pokes gentle fun at my fictional, fumbling Diptych Corporation. But the book is also a romance, and I don’t feel that the last cover, much as I liked it, conveyed “romcom.”

So here’s to a new experiment….

mama did NOT say there’d be days like this. exactly. lol

So I’m giving away five copies of Can Job, print edition, on Goodreads.

And I’ve been monitoring how my giveaway has compared to the others by watching it in the site’s “Most Requested” list.

I check again this morning — and this is what I found. Totally cracked me up :-)

Hiya, neighbors!

UPDATE: contest over but you can purchase a copy of Can Job here.

UPDATE #2: Can Job got a new cover :)