There are very few things, if any, that mean more to an author than reader appreciation or reviewer accolades. And there is nothing so frustrating as not having a sufficient platform to share good news, teasers, inspirations, and thanks. Me? I’m still working on my platform.
I’m a mom who works full-time as a nurse. When I’m at home, it’s a mad flurry of getting out of my uniform, checking in with everyone, coordinating dinner prep, having some family fun time, snatching a minute of quiet time for myself and then onto full-time job #2: book business. Next, before you know it, the alarm clock is buzzing and it’s time for job #1 again. Frankly, I’m exhausted.
Had I planned better, and taken advantage of multi-media platforms, things would have been far less chaotic. However, my learning curve for connecting with readers, marketing, promotion, and branding would not have been nearly so meaningful. Plus, I wouldn’t have had quality time with my grandkids who were teaching me how to do social media, anyway.
I appreciate those authors who can manage writer’s lifts, spit out blogs, format, do graphic art, and are already computer or media literate. I’m not that person. I enjoy the slower pace, growing a more organic readership, doing one thing at a time. For me it’s all about the journey, not the destination, right?
But now, I find myself in need of a more accessible platform than I have because several of my books are nominated in the Paranormal Romance Guild 2020 Reviewer’s Choice Awards. I could use your help with votes and name recognition. Whatever you can do to help, I’d appreciate—same as any author appreciates. So—
I’m nominated in three categories:
ROMANCE/FANTASY/PARANORMAL/SUSPENSE/TIME TRAVEL/HISTORICAL/MAGICAL/WESTERN/NATIVE AMERICAN/GOTHIC
“These Are for Tears” is my book nominated in this category. It’s the third in a series of stories about an American college student finishing her senior year abroad where she learns a bit more than she’d planned. Fairies are real—and not at all like the gossamer-winged, pixie dust sprinkling ones we all know and love. Magic is hidden, in plain sight. Your words are your bond. And sometimes, getting what you wished for turns into something quite unexpected.
ROMANCE/FANTASY/PARANORMAL/SUSPENSE/TIME TRAVEL/HISTORICAL/WESTERN/MAGICAL REALISM/NATIVE AMERICAN/GOTHIC – SERIES
The Will-o’-the-Wisp Series is my series nominated in this category. “These Are for Tears,” is a book in this series about the place where the dark fae and human realms collide. Here’s a hint. It’s somewhere in coastal Northern Ireland.
NOVELLAS & SHORTS
“A Girl and Her Dog,” is my book nominated in this category. It’s an under an hour read about being raised among aliens. They’re feral shifters. You’re not. All you want to do is go home again. But once there, you realize how much like “them” you are and where you truly belong. BTW, N.N. Lights Book Heaven did the cover for this one and I love it!
All of my books can be found on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. Each has the “Look Inside” preview option.
If you can help me out with your vote, the Paranormal Romance Guild Link can be found here, and my links are attached.
Go to the ballot https://www.paranormalromanceguild.com/2020-paranormal-romance-guild-reviewers-choice-award-ballot/
You’ll need to have either an email or you can use your Google account. After you vote, go down to the bottom of the ballot and click submit.
Voting runs from 2/6/21 to 2/12/21 and results will be announced on or about 2/14/21.
My books and I appreciate it!
Title: A Girl and Her Dog
Author: Sherry Perkins
Genre: SciFi Thriller, Alien/Shifter Romance
Blurb:
When you’re raised among alien shifters, change is constant.
Taken from the arms of her mother, a girl is raised by a family so feral and alien to her that she hardly knows how to describe them. Nor is she able to describe the longing she has to return home, to see again the mother and family she misses so desperately. When her chosen mate deceives the clan to give her a chance to go home some twenty years later, she takes it, beginning a journey of unexpected self-discovery, joy and sadness. Her companion is her faithful dog, and someone with a surprising connection to her past. Together they learn family is what you make it, that love is more than a human emotion, and often, the people who love you most are the ones who make the greatest sacrifices.
Excerpt:
Dog had seen the car before me. It was some kind of emergency vehicle. A sedan with earth-toned panels, a heavy bumper, and a light bar on its top that was flashing amber caution lights. There was a man inside the car, but I couldn’t make out his features since the snow was falling heavily, obscuring my view. I could see that he was doing something…talking into the radio, I think. He was being quite thorough about it, whatever it was that he was doing as the snowflakes continued to fall around us.
Dog barked once and shook the accumulating snow off her fur. She looked at me, then came and stood close. No doubt to protect me if it was necessary. I smiled and patted her on the head because she was such a good dog.
When I looked up from patting her, the man was walking to me, placing his hat onto his head. He was wearing a warm looking coat over some sort of a uniform, and I could see he was carrying a weapon where the coat had bunched around the holster. He was a policeman, then.
The policeman smiled as he neared. He said, “Darlin’, you shouldn’t out here in all this snow. Where’s your car? Did it break down up the road somewhere?”
“No, sir,” I answered as Dog trotted to him, her tail wagging enthusiastically which was something I’d never seen her do with anyone other than Jaymes. But I knew what she was thinking: he smells like you. And that couldn’t be bad, right?
He took a closer look at me, at the snowflakes on my eyelashes and the ice in my hair. My ears were a bright red. I think the tip of my nose was too. My fingers were just a tad numb. Now that I had stopped moving and was therefore no longer generating muscle heat, I had begun to shiver. I was hardly dressed for this kind of weather. I think he noticed that because he started to take off his gloves by biting the tip of one pair and pulling at the glove fingers with his teeth. When he had the glove partly off, he pulled it the rest of the way with the other hand. Then he unsnapped the buttons on his coat with his bare hands. The coat was zipped beneath the buttons in some redundant fashion. Once he’d gotten the coat unzipped, he took it off. He draped it over my shoulders as he brushed my icy hair behind my ears.
He frowned. “What are you and the dog doing walking around in a blizzard anyway? Are you lost?”
“No, sir,” I said again. He looked at me as if he expected me to say more so I said, “It was not cold when I left the place we came from. And there was no snow. We were not dressed for snow. We were not expecting it.”
Dog barked in agreement.
The policeman smiled. He handed his gloves to me, then leaned over to pet Dog. He said, “C’mon over to the cruiser. I have some coffee you can drink to warm up. I have a blanket in the trunk the dog can wrap in. We’ll turn the cruiser heat on high, wait till it gets nice and toasty inside and then we can talk more, OK?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, nodding my head while staring at my hands. I’d tried to put the gloves on, but the policeman had giant hands, and his gloves were floppy–like bunny ears. I laughed. He started laughing too, reaching up to take the coat off my shoulders so I could put my arms into it. When I got my arms in, he tugged me forward to zip it up for me. The coat was very big. But it was warm, and it smelled good. It smelled like him. Like goodness and hard, honest work.
Buy Link:
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Title: At the End of the Rainbow (Book 1 of the Will-o’-the-Wisp Stories)
Author: Sherry Perkins
Genre: Paranormal Romance Thriller
Book Blurb:
Morgan Patterson came to Northern Ireland for her senior college year abroad to focus on her studies far away from family drama. But she’s quickly distracted by a hunk of a police sergeant named Tiernan Doherty. Though he’s old enough to be her da, as her new friends are quick to point out, she fancies him. And he certainly seems to be obsessed with her. Eagerly going against all good advice, Morgan becomes more and more bound to Tiernan—by ties of lust and love and protection, and maybe even duty. But there is more to their attraction than Morgan can explain with her science textbooks, and more is going on in this sleepy village than she could ever have imagined. She was once so sure that faerie stories were fiction. But there’s no denying the strange visions and dreams she’s been experiencing again since coming to this place. So many of the people she’s met—both those looking out for her welfare and those seeking to destroy her—seem to feel she is a special one, with powers that are only now coming fully into her possession. Will she finally begin to understand that herself before it’s too late?
Excerpt:
“What is it you want from me, Morgan Patterson?” he asked. The tone of his voice was different, no longer flirtatious.
“Tiernan,” she began, looking into his eyes, seeing a rush of images. Images of him, her and of blood—their blood, mingled. Images of a woman with long, dark hair who wanted to keep them apart at any cost. Other images that were too confusing for Morgan to process. It was like watching a DVD on fast forward. It made her more than a little dizzy, frightened too.
When the rush of images and accompanying dizziness slowed, Morgan took a deep, steadying breath. Suddenly, she realized why she was there, in Northern Ireland. She was there to protect him, Tiernan Doherty.
“Listen to me now, girl, and you listen good,” Tiernan said, his voice a warning. “I’ve nothing left to take. Your wee gypsy gobshite of a friend saw to that. Even if I’d something left to give anybody, I’ve debts what need be paid first.”
Morgan blinked several times to clear her head. She said, “Tiernan Doherty, what could you possibly have that I would want to take from you? Don’t be such a dolt!”
She pivoted and walked away from him, saying, “What I want from you, Tiernan, is nothing. Nothing you don’t want to give me, nothing you don’t want me to have.”
“Aye,” he whispered, more to himself than her. “And dolt that I am, I thought maybe it was my heart you were wanting to take.”
“Whatever. But this much is true, I would die for you—if that’s what it takes,” she muttered. Pausing at the door, a frightening and determined smile crossed her face. Speaking it aloud for the dark-haired woman to hear, she said, “Do you hear me you crazy, fairy bitch? Are you out there listening? I would die for him. I don’t give a rat’s ass what he owes you or who you are, because he is mine now.”
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):
Title: These Are for Tears
Author: Sherry Perkins
Genre: Paranormal Romance Thriller
Book Blurb:
Too much family drama at home. That's what Morgan Patterson was thinking when she left the States to finish her final year of college studying abroad in Northern Ireland. She quickly finds herself immersed in a hidden world of magic and danger with the man of her dreams at the center of it. Only he's not a man. Tiernan Doherty is an honest-to-goodness faerie lord with family drama of his own. There's a blood feud to be settled, not to mention a messy chain of duty that binds him to the queen of the dark fae, a woman he truly despises. None of that matters to Morgan, though. She realizes Tiernan's not just the man of her dreams, he's the man she's meant to protect. But what she does to protect him surprises everyone, threatening the longstanding peace between humans and faeries, and causing more than enough tears for them all. "These Are for Tears," is the third book in the Will-o'-the-Wisp Stories, a serialized, epic urban fantasy that proves nothing is what it seems, promises are meant to be kept and words are binding things.
Excerpt:
“Get her,” the Vicar said, urgency in his tone. “Bring Morgan and the wee girl-child home.”
“But Dad, I don’t know we can protect them both,” Mada said as she grabbed her coat off the hook beside the back door. “It might take more than me and Uaine to look after them both.”
“’Tis not them what need protecting,” Vicar O’Donnell said to his children. “Morgan and her bairn, their fate was always assured. ’Tis Tiernan Doherty what needs protecting. Our Morgan was right about that. To do that, to protect Tiernan, Morgan and the bairn, they need be away from him. If they stay with him now, he’ll learn things he’s not meant to learn. Not just yet. Take Uaine, and hurry now. Before Tiernan figures out what is happened; what he is unwitting party to. He’ll kill Em if he susses it. Then we’ll be at the end of everything we know and hold dear. But not before he has a go at Connor and Morgan herself—for the deception they’ve done to him.”
Mada nodded. She called for Uaine. As she headed out the door, she stopped to ask, “Dad, what about Connor?”
“Connor? Leave him be. He has other work to do. Best not to know about it nor interfere with it,” he said. “Mada, have faith. The girls are safe. Tiernan is not. Connor is not within our reach. Not now, he’s not. Regardless, seeing after the girls will keep Tiernan from doing something unwise, so that is what we must attend to, at the moment. Bring Morgan here, back home to us, where she belongs.”
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):
Author Biography:
Indie author Sherry Perkins has a natural curiosity and love for life-long learning. When not on the beach collecting shells or sea glass, she can be found in her garden avoiding the snakes or following the Dave Matthews Band to snake-free venues on the East Coast. During a once in a lifetime visit to Northern Ireland, she was inspired to write the beginning lines to what would become the Will-o’-the-Wisp Stories. The Wisp Stories are serialized tales of well-known folklore, reimagined in a contemporary form with small town sensibility and scientific inquiry added. Books in the Wisp Stories have previously been short-listed for “best in genre” at the Paranormal Romance Guild Reviewers Choice Awards. In addition to the Wisp Stories, she has written blended genre sci-fi thriller and romance, or cozy murder mysteries. Her books invite the reader to imagine what they might do in tough situations and challenge beliefs—because as she learned in Northern Ireland, nothing is what it seems and you really should leave a saucer of milk with a slice of cake at the back gate every night if you want to keep in the good graces of the wee folk (and maybe banish the garden snakes). Learn more at: www.whatyouwishedfor.net
Social Media Links:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/sherryaperkins
Twitter: www.twitter.com/SherryP37399883
Instagram: www.instagram.com/sherry19950