Winners & Red Rope Updates

Good day to you, Champions! Today is another newsy, update filled day.

First of all, congratulations to the five winners of my Mother’s Day raffle:  Cindy K, Catherine K, Becky G, Johanna D, and Gia! All five winners have been emailed, and will receive their prizes as soon as they get back to me let me know which K. M. Shea e-book they would like. Thank you to everyone who entered—I hope you all had a happy Mother’s Day!

I do have more news to share on Red Rope of Fate. With the help of some of my fabulous Champions, it has come to my attention that anyone who has read Red Rope of Fate through Kindle Unlimited and then purchased the new edition of Red Rope of Fate, is still going to get stuck with the old version. Your Kindle and Amazon account have something of a memory, so even if you deleted the book off of your account and repurchased it you’d still end up with the old edition. To get the new version, you want to talk to Amazon customer service.

How can you know if you have the old edition or the new version? Easy! The first words of the new edition are… “Elves and Humans could not communicate. Tari had known this since she was young.” If you don’t have that, you’ve got the old version.

To contact customer service, go to any Amazon page and scroll to the bottom. Under the “Let Us Help You” at the very bottom there is a “Help” tab. Once on the new help page, scroll down to the “Browse Help Topics” and at the bottom of the topics list you’ll see “Need More Help?” click on that and it will bring up a sub-menu. One of the sub-menu options is “Contact Us” which will take you to a new page. It asks what you want help with (Digital services) and what the exact problem is, then asks your preferred contact method–the website says a phone call is best, but most Champions have said instant messaging works great as well. (Email, not so much.)

Then tell them you have a book in your account that you want updated because there is a new edition available.

This will work for those of you who have not gotten the updates available button, although by now everyone should have it. (Another helpful Champion who spoke to customer service said Amazon mentioned it might take a day or two for the updates available box to pop up on your account, but as it has been over a week if you haven’t gotten it now you probably need to contact customer service.)

Thus far, everyone seems pretty happy with the changes to the book– which obviously makes me a happy, happy author. Swan Lake is going through some final edits with editor #2. Hopefully next week or the week after I’ll be able to send it back to editor #1 for the last proofread, and then it should be available for preorder in early June!

That is it for today! Thank you for reading, Champions, I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Mother’s Day Raffle

Happy Mother’s Day, champions! Originally I had planned to release a post about the roles of enchanters and enchantresses in the Timeless Fairy Tale series today, however, there ended up being a few new, more pressing, updates I need to share.

To begin with, Red Rope of Fate has gone through a massive edit/rewrite. I’ve uploaded the new version, so it is available to purchase, but for those of you who have already bought it, I talked to an Amazon support techie, who made update available in your user account. He said, “We’ve sent an e-mail to customers who own the book to notify them of the update. These customers can download the update through their “Manage Your Content and Devices” page.” So keep an eye out for the email, or check out your “manage your content and devices” page.

The Red Rope of Fate rewrite includes several new scenes told from Arion’s point of view, and I trimmed down a lot of lengthy explanations. Hopefully, you will enjoy the changes!

Up next, is the KM Shea starter pack! In order to encourage newsletter sign-up, I will now be giving away a “starter pack” to anyone who signs up for the newsletter. The starter pack includes a two page King Arthurs short story, a four page Red Rope of Fate prequel story, and a short fairytale-esque story. (The fairytale story has no ties to the timeless fairy tales world, it is a completely original story.)

If you sign up for the newsletter, a link to the starter pack will be included in your welcome email. The link will take you to a site where you can download the.mobi file for your Kindle, or view the PDF file. I am aware that many of you have already signed up for the newsletter, so in May’s newsletter– which will be going out shortly–I will include a link to the starter pack so everyone gets a chance to download it.

Finally, today marks the beginning of my Mother’s Day raffle. It’s free to enter, and out of the entrants five randomly selected winners will receive a K. M. Shea ebook of their choice. It opens today, and will close Thursday night, May 12. This raffle follows all the usual terms and conditions– I reserve the right to change the prize, shut down the raffle, etc– and you can only enter once.

As you might recall, there isn’t a rafflecopter widget for wordpress, so I have to use a link. So click here to go to the raffle!

Finally, I want to conclude with a shout out to all of you mothers! (And when I say mothers, I mean all of you wonderful ladies who have had an impact on the generations that come after you. Not all mothers have given birth, and that doesn’t make you any less amazing or inspiring to those who look up to you.) Being a mother is an incredible, tough, and simultaneously heartbreaking job, but I am so grateful for all of you! Enjoy your special day, and have a fabulous weekend! Thanks for reading, and I promise next week I’ll get that post out!

Book Banquet: Translator Tea

Today I’m featuring a recipe from one of my books, Red Rope of Fate. In Red Rope of Fate one of the ways the Translators’ Circle is able to swindle Tari into meeting with them, is by offering her their fantastic tea. Little does Tari know the tea is excessively easy to make.

Translator Tea

Ingredients:

1. A black tea of your choice (Early Gray or breakfast teas are the best)

2. Cream (or milk)

3. Sugar (or honey)

4. a pinch of Cocoa

5. a pinch cinnamon

Preparation:

There are two ways you can go about this. If you want to do it the quick/easy route buy black tea bags, boil water, and pour into a mug. Place the teabag in the mug and let it seep for a while before pushing the tea bag aside and adding the milk. Let it seep a little while longer before adding the sugar, and cinnamon, followed by a little bit of cocoa. Add just enough cocoa to get that nutty chocolate taste, the sweetness comes from the sugar, not the cocoa.

If you want to brew the tea the way the translators would have you’ll need some extra equipment.

For starters you’ll want to pick up actual black tea leaves. There are specialty tea stores in malls now, like Teavanna, otherwise you can purchase tea leaves online. Note: if you use tea leaves you’ll need to let it brew for a longer period of time then if you were to use a tea bag.

You will also need something to brew your tea leaves in. There’s a few ways of doing this. You can use an actual teapot with a built in strainer (just about all Japanese tea sets have these. You can pick up a Japanese tea set for a reasonable price at second hand stores/thrift shops.) or can use any tea pot and hold the tea strainer physically outside the pot as you pour yourself a cup, or you can purchase a steel tea ball which can be used to brew tea in a mug. (Just stuff the tea ball with the tea leaves and drop it in.)

If using a teapot place the tea leaves on the bottom of the teapot and then add the boiled water. Once your tea has brewed for a while add milk, or if you’re looking for a richer taste, cream. Again, Sugar or honey will serve as your as a sweetener. If you’re aiming for authenticity I recommend honey, as that would be the cheapest resource. Then add the cocoa and the cinnamon–you will need to stir the tea to mix these in.

I actually do have some pretty complex reasoning behind the ingredients. Since the elves only traded with Calnor they didn’t buy a wide variety of goods. Of course they were fine with this–they don’t really like change anyway so they would be unlikely to adopt foreign foods–but this means their sweeteners are fairly limited. When crafting their culture I decided they mostly use honey, fruit, and a little bit of sugar for their sweetening agents/baking.

Humans from Calnor, on the other hand, trade with the rest of the human countries. This means chocolate and cinnamon are available to them if they’re willing to pay the price and import them from other countries. (Which the translators circle does.)

Enjoy your tea and this bit of geeky goodness, Champions! I promise my next few Book Banquets will be actual recipes. 😉