I first started out in 2010 when Ellora's Cave published Punishing the Art Thief, followed by another bunch of books, including the self-published Overheated, and a Berkley Heat anthology.
I signed with an agent in 2011, and we had a successful run together, with 6 books sold to Simon & Schuster Pocket (The Enslaved Trilogy, and The Pulse Trilogy), and another book sold to Entangled Indulgence (The Tycoon's Convenient Bride...and Baby, coming soon).
Recently (March 2014) I decided to part ways with my agent amicably.
Moving forward from an agent when you have books together is a bit like getting separated when you have kids -- she will still be the agent for those books. We'll still be in contact because of them. And a book that she shopped on my behalf that I'm revising right now is hers if it sells, too.
And that's not a bad thing! My previous agent is a wonderful woman, someone I trust, and I hope we will enjoy continued success together with those 7 (maybe 8!) books we have together.
So, to be clear: I'm not against having an agent. Not at all!
In fact, I think, especially when you have as many irons in the fire as I do, that having an agent is pretty important (even if you continue to self-publish, as I'm doing).
I'm excited (also: nervous) about where my career is going, and I have faith that there is an agency out there that will be a good fit for me in this stage of my career... as I self-publish, as I continue building my traditional publishing career, and as I pursue audiobooks and film rights.
I also want to say thank you, thank you for all of the lovely emails, Tweets, and Facebook messages I got when MAKE ME: Twelve Tales of Dark Desire hit the New York Times and the USA Today Bestseller list! I am truly blessed to have such wonderful readers.
All my best,
Shoshanna
Sexily *Evers* After... ShoshannaEvers.com
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Sunday, February 23, 2014
MAKE ME - a multi-author box set for one month only
MAKE ME: Twelve Tales of Dark Desire releases March 3rd, 2013!
an Amazon Bestseller!
I'm thrilled to be a part of this limited-time box set! Preorder and first week pricing is just 99c, and then the price goes up. On March 31st, 2014... MAKE ME disappears from sale forever...
Take a trip to the dark side with 12 books by some of the hottest names in edgy romance, including USA Today Bestselling authors CJ Roberts, Eliza Gayle, and Aleatha Romig!
Pam Godwin – Beneath the Burn
Skye Warren – Wanderlust
Claire Thompson – Enslaved
Cari Silverwood – Take Me Break Me
Annabel Joseph – Comfort Object
Aleatha Romig – Consequences
Shoshanna Evers – The Man Who Holds the Whip
Annika Martin – The Hostage Bargain
Jasmine Haynes – Take Your Pleasure
Eliza Gayle – Play With Me
Pepper Winters – Tears of Tess
CJ Roberts – Captive in the Dark
These e-books would cost over $40 if purchased separately. This set will only be available for a limited time, so order your copy now!
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Thank you, reviewers!
I just want to take a moment to give a huge thank you to the awesome book bloggers and readers who have read and reviewed Beauty and the Beast (an erotic re-imagining). I know it takes time and energy to write and post reviews, and I am so grateful that you've taken the time to do so! I'm grateful for all reviews, good and bad, because once the book is out of my hands it belongs to you, my readers. Your opinion matters.
Here's what some reviewers are saying about Beauty and the Beast on Goodreads:
5 stars! "Although I have read and seen many versions of Beauty and The Beast, there have been none quite like this. It's still a beautiful story about discovering a person's inner beauty and accepting them for who they are regardless of their appearance, but the love scenes are very arousing and sexy."
~ Lisa M. (see full review here)
4.5 stars! "So...I will never be viewing Beauty and the Beast the same. Now all I'll think about is how the Beast ravished/spanked/whipped/etc a (willing) Beauty while a prisoner in his castle."
~ Brittney Marczak (see full review here)
5 stars! "Shoshanna's reimagined tale is far more gratifying than its predecessors in that readers get permission to experience a sexual being, a sexual Beauty, with a sexy, kinky Beast."
~ Jade Onyx (see full review here)
5 stars! "I found myself reading and watching everything unfold in my head. And only great books do that for me. ... It is one to keep with you, in your favorites pile."
~ Tara Vose (see full review here)
Get the this Amazon Fairytales Bestseller
on Amazon, B&N, iBooks, Smashwords, Amazon UK,
and add it to your Goodreads shelves here!
Here's the blurb for Beauty and the Beast (an erotic re-imagining):
From bestselling erotica author Shoshanna Evers comes an erotic re-imagining of the classic fairytale, Beauty and the Beast.
With her father’s freedom at stake, Belle agrees to be the fearsome Beast’s prisoner in his enchanted castle. Held as his willing captive, Belle must submit to the Beast’s most primal desires to survive.
The Beast can’t let his little Beauty go free, not while there’s still hope that she might be the one to end his decade-long curse…and with true love’s kiss, return him to the Prince he once was.
Their story is one that begins with imprisonment—he in his monstrous body, she in a dungeon—but without this predicament, Beauty would never have met the Beast.
So we shall begin with what occurred on that fateful night when everything changed: when a lover was betrayed, a man deformed, and a castle shrouded in an enchantment…
Friday, February 14, 2014
Beauty and the Beast Blog Tour and Giveaway!
It's release day for Beauty and the Beast (an erotic re-imagining)!
We've got a great blog tour and giveaway happening today!
We've got a great blog tour and giveaway happening today!
So we'll have seven winners! The more blogs you hit, the better your chances of winning! I've offered the bloggers a few different excerpts to choose from, so if you're looking for a sneak peek, you've got it!
You can get Beauty and the Beast (an erotic re-imagining) in paperback, or the ebook on Amazon, B&N, iBooks, Smashwords, and Amazon UK, and add it to your Goodreads shelves here!
There's also the first 25% of the book up on Goodreads to sample!
Thank you to the amazing bloggers featuring Beauty and the Beast today!
10: Punya Reviews...
14: Smutmas
20: Erotica For All
22: Danita Minnis
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Grammarly: might work for some, but not for me
I tried Grammarly's plagiarism checker free of charge because I wrote a story that's been told, in different re-incarnations, many times before. Yup, we're talking about Beauty and the Beast (an erotic re-imagining)!
While my version is original, I figured it couldn't hurt to run the book through Grammarly's plagiarism checker and make sure no little bits of other Beauty and the Beast stories managed to infiltrate their way into my book.
So when Grammarly contacted me and offered to sponsor a blog post about them, I agreed, mainly because I was already thinking it'd be cool to see what they had to offer. I've been offered to do sponsored posts before, and turned them down, because they weren't relevant to me or my readers. This is, so that's my excuse for going for it. :) However, there are *no* affiliate links in this post.
Unfortunately, they might not be so happy with my findings. I gave it a good shot, I really did. I checked two different books in their checker.
I had visions in my head of how awesome it would be if Amazon used a plagiarism detector to run book files through, so we wouldn't have authors getting ripped off like in the case of Elizabeth Nelson.
Sorry, folks, but the technology just isn't there yet. The Pulse is published already, but there wasn't a single plagiarism alert for the chapter I pasted in.
I will say that Grammarly got this right: They discovered that there was text online that contained the exact same words as a paragraph in my other book! The text is on my Smashwords preorder page for Beauty and the Beast. They matched the wording on my book page to the wording in my excerpt. So that's good! They got that.
But they got a lot more wrong, unfortunately. Every time I used the words "Beauty and the Beast" in my Author Note in the beginning of the book (the part where I acknowledge the original fairytale and the other versions of the story, and made note of what was similar and what was different), Grammarly would put an alert, saying the phrase "Beauty and the Beast" was "plagiarized." That's not accurate, since you can't copyright a book title, but they don't know it's a book title.
I figured I better run something else through Grammarly, to give it a fair shot. So I put a long excerpt from The Pulse, Book 1 in the Pulse Trilogy, through their checker. As you can see in the screen shot, not one plagiarism alert, despite the fact that this book is published on multiple retailers, with excerpts on various blogs. Apparently my dream of Amazon using the program for plagiarism checks is still far away -- they don't quite have it down yet.
Grammarly also does grammar checks -- oh my, they sure do hate my grammar! Specifically, they can't stand conjunctions (and/but) used at the beginnings of sentences. But I use those a lot! (see what I did there? Tee hee.)
For folks who want to change every "But" to a "However," however, their suggestions could work.
Some of what they suggest would actually insert errors into the manuscript where there were none before (see the first screengrab), such as in The Pulse, in the sentence that says "he reached up and gently pinched her other nipple," they wanted me to change the word "other" to "another." Noooo. But, they did suggest adding some commas that, grammatically, were definitely correct. I just choose to leave them out for style.
Another Grammarly error that popped up a few times: random semi-colons. In my Author Note in Beauty and the Beast, I wrote "There have been many, many other adaptions" -- they wanted me to change it to "There have been many; many other adaptions." Nooo! You should only use a semi-colon if there is a full sentence on each side of the semi-colon. It's kinda like a period that way.
What if I didn't know that? I'd be introducing bad punctuation into my book.
And that, folks, is the reason Grammarly doesn't work for me. I have my own style of writing. I know the rules, and I choose to break them. On purpose. (That was a sentence fragment! The horror!)
If I were in high school and writing papers, I would probably be all over Grammarly. I think their fixes would work best on academic writing. You can actually choose which type of writing you have for them to check, such as academic, business, or creative, but the fixes all seem pretty academic to me. They do have some helpful suggestions, but an automated program is not as good as a human brain when it comes to finding and fixing errors.
In conclusion: for $29.95 a month, $59.95 a quarter, or $139.95 for a year, Grammarly is a helluva lot cheaper than hiring a proofreader. But a proofreader will do a better job, any day. I won't be using it again, but your mileage may vary. You can try it for free for a week and decide for yourself.
UPDATE: August 2, 2017: Grammerly contacted me and asked me to remove hyperlinks to their site since they are "cleaning up" their backlinks. So, I did. If you want to find them, Google is your friend :)
Also, for those who are finding this in 2017: I have changed my name and genre. I am no longer writing erotic romance as Shoshanna Evers... I am now writing inspirational romance as Shoshanna Gabriel. Big change, I know! You can find me at ShoshannaGabriel.com and keep up-to-date by signing up for my monthly newsletter at ShoshannaGabriel.com/subscribe. Keep in touch!
All my best,
Shoshanna Evers
While my version is original, I figured it couldn't hurt to run the book through Grammarly's plagiarism checker and make sure no little bits of other Beauty and the Beast stories managed to infiltrate their way into my book.
So when Grammarly contacted me and offered to sponsor a blog post about them, I agreed, mainly because I was already thinking it'd be cool to see what they had to offer. I've been offered to do sponsored posts before, and turned them down, because they weren't relevant to me or my readers. This is, so that's my excuse for going for it. :) However, there are *no* affiliate links in this post.
Unfortunately, they might not be so happy with my findings. I gave it a good shot, I really did. I checked two different books in their checker.
I had visions in my head of how awesome it would be if Amazon used a plagiarism detector to run book files through, so we wouldn't have authors getting ripped off like in the case of Elizabeth Nelson.
Sorry, folks, but the technology just isn't there yet. The Pulse is published already, but there wasn't a single plagiarism alert for the chapter I pasted in.
 |
| Click to make bigger |
I will say that Grammarly got this right: They discovered that there was text online that contained the exact same words as a paragraph in my other book! The text is on my Smashwords preorder page for Beauty and the Beast. They matched the wording on my book page to the wording in my excerpt. So that's good! They got that.
 |
| click to make bigger |
But they got a lot more wrong, unfortunately. Every time I used the words "Beauty and the Beast" in my Author Note in the beginning of the book (the part where I acknowledge the original fairytale and the other versions of the story, and made note of what was similar and what was different), Grammarly would put an alert, saying the phrase "Beauty and the Beast" was "plagiarized." That's not accurate, since you can't copyright a book title, but they don't know it's a book title.
I figured I better run something else through Grammarly, to give it a fair shot. So I put a long excerpt from The Pulse, Book 1 in the Pulse Trilogy, through their checker. As you can see in the screen shot, not one plagiarism alert, despite the fact that this book is published on multiple retailers, with excerpts on various blogs. Apparently my dream of Amazon using the program for plagiarism checks is still far away -- they don't quite have it down yet.
Grammarly also does grammar checks -- oh my, they sure do hate my grammar! Specifically, they can't stand conjunctions (and/but) used at the beginnings of sentences. But I use those a lot! (see what I did there? Tee hee.)
For folks who want to change every "But" to a "However," however, their suggestions could work.
Some of what they suggest would actually insert errors into the manuscript where there were none before (see the first screengrab), such as in The Pulse, in the sentence that says "he reached up and gently pinched her other nipple," they wanted me to change the word "other" to "another." Noooo. But, they did suggest adding some commas that, grammatically, were definitely correct. I just choose to leave them out for style.
Another Grammarly error that popped up a few times: random semi-colons. In my Author Note in Beauty and the Beast, I wrote "There have been many, many other adaptions" -- they wanted me to change it to "There have been many; many other adaptions." Nooo! You should only use a semi-colon if there is a full sentence on each side of the semi-colon. It's kinda like a period that way.
What if I didn't know that? I'd be introducing bad punctuation into my book.
And that, folks, is the reason Grammarly doesn't work for me. I have my own style of writing. I know the rules, and I choose to break them. On purpose. (That was a sentence fragment! The horror!)
If I were in high school and writing papers, I would probably be all over Grammarly. I think their fixes would work best on academic writing. You can actually choose which type of writing you have for them to check, such as academic, business, or creative, but the fixes all seem pretty academic to me. They do have some helpful suggestions, but an automated program is not as good as a human brain when it comes to finding and fixing errors.
In conclusion: for $29.95 a month, $59.95 a quarter, or $139.95 for a year, Grammarly is a helluva lot cheaper than hiring a proofreader. But a proofreader will do a better job, any day. I won't be using it again, but your mileage may vary. You can try it for free for a week and decide for yourself.
UPDATE: August 2, 2017: Grammerly contacted me and asked me to remove hyperlinks to their site since they are "cleaning up" their backlinks. So, I did. If you want to find them, Google is your friend :)
Also, for those who are finding this in 2017: I have changed my name and genre. I am no longer writing erotic romance as Shoshanna Evers... I am now writing inspirational romance as Shoshanna Gabriel. Big change, I know! You can find me at ShoshannaGabriel.com and keep up-to-date by signing up for my monthly newsletter at ShoshannaGabriel.com/subscribe. Keep in touch!
All my best,
Shoshanna Evers
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
New release from S&S: THE ESCAPE!
THE ESCAPE just came out! It's my fifth book with Simon & Schuster Pocket Star, and the second book in The Pulse Trilogy.
I also found an app called WordSwag, in which I was able to take quotes from my book and make them into word-art, like these:
Cool, right? :) Here's a blurb and links to THE ESCAPE.
In Book Two of the erotic dystopian Pulse Trilogy, Jenna escapes New York City only to be tracked down by a soldier who might be her only hope of survival. Jenna doesn’t know if she believes what Emily and Mason told her—that America is rebuilding and a better life awaits her outside of Manhattan.
But with the power grid down and no connection to the outside world, Jenna will die if she stays at Grand Central’s FEMA camp, selling her body to soldiers. Private Ken Barker is sent to capture Jenna when she escapes—but Jenna knows he’s one of the good guys and tries to seduce him into joining her. Their passionate sex kindles something even stronger than lust between them, and when Barker goes back to Grand Central he sees the horrors there with new eyes.
Now it’s his turn to escape the city, and he knows he must take Jenna with him or she’ll die at the camp. On the road, they’ll start a new life together, hoping against hope that the electricity between them will prove more than just a spark—that together they might finally light up their dark nights.
THE ESCAPE, Book 2 in the Pulse Trilogy is available now on Amazon, B&N, iBooks, Amazon UK
I also found an app called WordSwag, in which I was able to take quotes from my book and make them into word-art, like these:
Cool, right? :) Here's a blurb and links to THE ESCAPE.
The Escape, Book 2 in the Pulse Trilogy
In Book Two of the erotic dystopian Pulse Trilogy, Jenna escapes New York City only to be tracked down by a soldier who might be her only hope of survival. Jenna doesn’t know if she believes what Emily and Mason told her—that America is rebuilding and a better life awaits her outside of Manhattan.
But with the power grid down and no connection to the outside world, Jenna will die if she stays at Grand Central’s FEMA camp, selling her body to soldiers. Private Ken Barker is sent to capture Jenna when she escapes—but Jenna knows he’s one of the good guys and tries to seduce him into joining her. Their passionate sex kindles something even stronger than lust between them, and when Barker goes back to Grand Central he sees the horrors there with new eyes.
Now it’s his turn to escape the city, and he knows he must take Jenna with him or she’ll die at the camp. On the road, they’ll start a new life together, hoping against hope that the electricity between them will prove more than just a spark—that together they might finally light up their dark nights.
THE ESCAPE, Book 2 in the Pulse Trilogy is available now on Amazon, B&N, iBooks, Amazon UK
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Giveaway - 5 paperback ARCs of Beauty and the Beast!
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Beauty and the Beast
by Shoshanna Evers
Giveaway ends January 10, 2014.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
Beauty and the Beast (an erotic re-imagining)
releases on Valentine's Day, February 14th, 2014,
and the paperback is available for preorder now!
With her father’s freedom at stake, Belle agrees to be the fearsome Beast’s prisoner in his enchanted castle. Held as his willing captive, Belle must submit to the Beast’s most primal desires to survive.
The Beast can’t let his little Beauty go free, not while there’s still hope that she might be the one to end his decade-long curse…and with true love’s kiss, return him to the Prince he once was.
Their story is one that begins with imprisonment—he in his monstrous body, she in a dungeon—but without this predicament, Beauty would never have met the Beast.
So we shall begin with what occurred on that fateful night when everything changed: when a lover was betrayed, a man deformed, and a castle shrouded in an enchantment…
Beauty and the Beast (an erotic re-imagining) releases Valentine's Day, February 14th, 2014!
And now... a little sneak peek ;)
Excerpt from Beauty and the Beast (an erotic re-imagining) by Shoshanna Evers
Copyright 2013 Shoshanna Evers
All Rights Reserved.
Beast bared his
fangs, and she cringed.
“Y-you’re smiling,”
she said. It might take her a while to get used to that.
“I am. I have a
proposition for you.” He gently smoothed her skirt back over burning bottom,
and turned her around to face him. “I haven’t had a woman in my bed for a very
long time. If you’d be willing to sleep with me, I’d reduce your lifetime
imprisonment to one short year.”
Belle gasped, both
at the idea of sleeping with him, and the idea of a life sentence being reduced
to a year.
“You’d crush me to
death,” she said, looking up at his towering hulk.
“I would not. Wasn’t
I very gentle with you earlier, in your cell, when I made you feel so amazing,
as you put it? Right before you—”
Right before she
cut him and ran. Yes, she could recall something like that happening.
“It’s really not ‘willing’
if I must bed you for my freedom,” she pointed out.
“Forget I said anything,”
he growled. “I’ll see you safely to your cell.”
“Wait!” She paused,
frantic, not willing to give up her one chance of freedom. And also not willing
to give up a very rational excuse for having more experiences like the one he’d
given her earlier. “Three months. Then I can go.”
“Six months, and
you do everything I say.”
“It’s—It’s a deal,
Beast.” She sighed. “I’m yours for six months. And then you set me free and you
forget all about me and my Papa.”
Beast smiled.
Yes…definitely a smile. “I very much doubt I will ever forget you, beauty. But
I’ll never harm you.”
Her thoughts
immediately flew to her sore bottom, at the way he spanked her so thoroughly.
Although, it was as he said. He’d hurt her, he had not harmed her. She would
remember her punishment when she sat down for a day or two, but it wasn’t like
he’d crippled her.
Or ate her. That
was something to be grateful for.
Beast looked around
his castle as though seeing it for the first time. “I suppose, if you’ll be
staying awhile, we could arrange more suitable sleeping quarters for you.”
“In your bed,” she
guessed.
“You’ll have your
own suite.” He spoke louder, and Belle realized he was probably summoning the
fairies. “Belle will need a suite, with a four poster bed, a bath, dresses in
the armoire, and a fire ready for her.”
“The fairies can do
all that?” she asked.
“Fairies?” He shook
his head and began to say something, but it just sounded like growling to her.
“Pardon?”
“Never mind. If you’d
like to believe we have a fairy infestation, then by all means. Believe what
you will.” Beast gestured for her to follow him up the stairs and into the west
wing of the castle.
She followed,
mesmerized by the glorious tapestries and paintings that adorned the long
hallways. Where had a beast gotten such wealth?
One oil painting,
of a young man, about her age perhaps, caught her eye. His handsome face seemed
to draw her in. Belle stopped in front of it, gazing at the portrait.
“He’s beautiful,”
she whispered.
“Thank you,” Beast
said. “I mean…I’m glad you appreciate the art in my castle.”
There was something
familiar about the young man’s intense green eyes.
“Do I—do I know
him?” she asked.
“Perhaps. You would
have been a child when this portrait was taken.”
She looked at the
inscription on the gold plaque beneath the portrait. It said “Prince Frederick,”
and was dated ten years prior. That would have been when she was nine years
old, and certainly never out and about, gazing into handsome princes’ green
eyes.
“I suppose I don’t,”
she said.
For some reason the
thought made her sad. What had become of that young man? Perhaps the portrait
was from another country. She’d never heard of a Prince Frederick before.
Beast kept walking
down the corridor, so she followed.
“I imagine you ate
everyone who lived in this castle,” Belle said. “That’s why they aren’t here,
and…you are.”
Beast whirled
around, and she was so caught off guard that she stumbled against his enormous
chest.
“I’m sorry,” she
gasped.
“That is not what
happened.”
“The painting was
ten years ago. Ten years ago, you changed. You told me so. I was merely…taking
an educated guess.”
“There was nothing
educated about it,” Beast said. “And if you’ll be staying under my roof for the
next six months, you might want to reconsider playing guessing games if you want
us to get along.”
She put her hand to
her mouth. “I apologize.”
“We’re here.” He
stopped in front of a large door, with the words “Belle’s Suite” etched into a
small silver placard on the door. “If you need anything—”
“I’ll just ask the
fairies,” she finished for him.
“Um, yes. Exactly.”
“Will I be
sleeping…uninterrupted?” She blushed as she spoke the words, but she had to
know if he’d be taking her up on their deal tonight.
“Dawn is almost
here. Sleep as late as you’d like. I won’t bother you until you come to me.”
“But…what if I never choose to…come to you?”
Beast raised his
heavy brow. “Your six months begins when you do. Take as long as you need.”
He held opened the
door to her suite and she stepped inside, reveling at the sight of the large
four poster bed with the flowing white linens, the glowing warmth of the fire
burning in the fireplace, and most of all…the roses. They were everywhere, the
scent beckoning her.
“Good night,
beauty.”
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