The authors of Constellate Creatives and Constellate Publishing are going to be out and about this summer, talking about our books, our publishing journey and our quest to find new authors to bring to the reading public.
Here are some of our events:
I’m so happy to be able to share this: You can now pre-order HAPPILY AFTER EVER, the newest novel from author Jill Blocker and Constellate Publishing!
“It started with a magic wand. Granted, it was the type of wand that was pink, sparkly and cost $1.99 at Target… but that was beside the point. The symbolism, I felt, was more important than its power.”
Girl meets boy. Girl falls in love with boy.
Girl moves across the world for love.
But it’s not until after the “Happily Ever After,” that she understands what true love is.
When Jill follows her heart from Seattle to Switzerland, she believes she’s stepping into the life she was always meant to have. Instead, she finds herself navigating the complicated realities of adulthood, identity, and the gap between the stories we’re told about love and the truth we discover for ourselves.
Against a backdrop of cobblestone streets, mountain peaks, and life-changing choices, Jill embarks on a deeply personal journey of self-discovery. As she confronts expectations, heartbreak, and the courage required to rewrite her own story, she learns that true love isn’t about finding someone else-it’s about finding yourself.
Perfect for readers who enjoyed the emotional self-discovery of Eat, Pray, Love, the honest millennial voice of Everything I Know About Love, and the reflective journey of Wild.
Heartfelt, insightful, and relatable, Happily After Ever is a coming-of-age story for anyone who has ever chased a dream, crossed an ocean for love, or wondered what comes next when the fairy tale ends.
Link to preorder below this photo of my friend, author Jill Blocker:
Here’s how to preorder HAPPILY AFTER EVER:
I think there are few writers who enjoy asking other writers and book influencers for blurbs, quotes and reviews.
I don’t know that I’ll continue to seek out marketable opinions of my books, if I continue to write books, but I’ve been blessed with insightful comments from people who’ve had a chance to read my books – in advance for inclusion as blurbs like the one shown above by wonderful author and friend Emily J. Edwards – and after the books are published as the most marketing-heavy element of book marketing.
I’ve had only one author say they’ve been too overwhelmed with their own work to take the time to read the book for a blurb or review.
How this process went for me:
Of course, we all know what reviews are, but blurbs are those little snippets of opinion – inevitably praising – that you see on book covers and inside. They attest to the value of the book and, sometimes, of the author.
With my first published novel, THAT OCTOBER, I waited until almost too late to ask. The book was slated for self-publishing on June 1, 2025 and I probably didn’t ask people until March or April. Every person I asked except for one hugely busy person was able to read the book and provide a blurb.
With SEVEN ANGELS, I was a little more organized and asked weeks, months, earlier, well before its June 1, 2026 publication date. I did so politely and with the understanding that they were probably too busy to do it, but they all did. One author who’d said she wouldn’t be able to blurb the book emailed later to say she’d begun reading it and wanted to blurb it. I’m not sure I got a higher compliment than that.
Each of the authors got a copy of the manuscript and I told them that there would be no substantial changes to come that might affect their opinions.
The blurbs were included in the book, most inside and one by Claire Booth on the back cover. My friend and cornerstone of Constellate Publishing Jill Blocker decided the positioning.
Afterward, when I had copies of the book, I asked a handful of people, friends and online tastemakers, who I provided either copies of the proof or copies of the book to. I stepped gingerly with my request here: “If I sent you a copy, would you consider reading it and possibly posting about it?” This was a step I didn’t take with THAT OCTOBER.
In the five days (as of today) since SEVEN ANGELS was published, I’ve encouraged people to post reviews on Amazon or other sites like Goodreads. And of course people I don’t know who might read the book might do the same.
It’s a ticklish process, for sure. You have to assume that the people you’re asking MIGHT like the book and be willing to say so publicly. If they don’t, though, at least they gave it a shot and shared their honest opinion.
Because years from now, if I’m lucky, someone might have an opinion. If it’s positive or negative or mixed, it’s still a sign that someone found the book and connected with it.
This is NOT a “pity me” post. Poor baby! He’s got a Facebook page that’s so popular he wants to kill it but can’t!
Well, I guess it is a “pity me” post.
My longtime co-author Douglas Walker and I wrote the first of our true crime books, WICKED MUNCIE, for the History Press in 2015 and the book was published in 2016. It did well enough that History Press wanted us to keep writing the books and we complied through our fourth, COLD CASE MUNCIE, published in 2023.
My favorite of the four books is THE WESTSIDE PARK MURDERS, about the most famous unsolved murders in our area, in and around Muncie, Indiana, published in 2021. A pandemic publication, it has done well despite – or because of? – we didn’t get to do our usual talks and signings.
Even before we were unable to talk to people in person because of the pandemic, four years before, in fact, I created a Facebook page named after WICKED MUNCIE, the first book. Over the years since 2016, I populated the page – sometimes on a hit and miss basis – with anecdotes about the four books and their making, plus I told stories that were not included in any of the books.
This year, 10 years after I created it, the WICKED MUNCIE Facebook page is still going strong, adding new followers every day. I haven’t posted much true crime content in a while – hmm maybe people prefer a page that doesn’t have a lot of new content from the likes of me – and now tops 3,600 Facebook followers. Undoubtedly some of those are bots and now-inactive accounts, but it’s a lot of eyeballs to just casually turn away from. Until just recently, it was my largest social media presence. That’s no longer the case as just this week, my Bluesky account reached more than 3,800 followers. That’s about the same number as follow my Twitter account, although I really suspect many of the “people” on that hellsite are not actually people.
So with 3,600 followers on the WICKED MUNCIE page, I don’t feel like I can shutter it or even walk away and neglect it. So I’m cross-posting some of the same stuff I post on my other socials. And of course there’ll be some true crime stuff occasionally. Not as much as in the past, though.
So yes, there’s a word for someone who won’t walk away from a platform that affords them thousands of followers. Several words, really.
It’s like that old joke with the punchline, “We’ve already established what you are. Now we’re just haggling over the price.”
As part of a series, I’m highlighting some blurbs from authors who’ve read my new novel SEVEN ANGELS, out June 1 from Constellate Publishing. Today, Ms. Emily J. Edwards.
Maybe I violate some unspoken rule here when I note that some of the people who’ve read my book and been kind enough to blurb it are friends, like Colin Harker and Emily J. Edwards. But who would not want to claim them as friends?
Emily is a friend I met through social media and we chat a lot about writing and publishing. We trade pieces and snippets we’ve written to give each other some thoughts and she’s so smart and savvy.
I was recently a guest on her upcoming podcast, Silver Screen Sleuths, and we had a blast recording it.
She wrote the “Girl Friday” series of 1950s-set crime novels, led by “Viviana Valentine Gets Her Man,” and you should see out those books because they’re spot-on recreations of the time and setting, New York City.
Emily had written short stories and has a new novel in the works that you will, trust me, love.
To know more about Emily:
I’ve been a writer since high school and a reporter most of my life. As of today, I’ve got a new title: head of Content and Publishing at Constellate Publishing, part of Constellate Creatives.
The title is fun, but what I’ll be doing is what’s important: Helping other writers work toward their goals of writing, completing their book and publishing their work and helping them reach readers.
There’s a button on the CC site that’ll lead to a free consultation.
If writing is your dream, we can help make that dream a reality.
I love a good mystery. Obviously, it’s what I write, at least a lot of the time. So as Constellate Creatives is putting together my novel SEVEN ANGELS for 2026 release, I’ve put titles to the novel’s 69 chapters.
Here are some. And yes, I deliberately tried to invoke the “say what now?” feeling of the cryptic episode titles of shows like STRANGER THINGS.
Looking forward to June 2026 publication of SEVEN ANGELS.
It’s a work in progress, but aren’t we all?
Y’all know by now, if you care to, that I’m working with my friends at Constellate Creatives. We’ll be helping writers with editing (both developmental and copy editing) book design, cover design, marketing and publicity for their books.
The boss at CC came up with the CP logo above, which stands for Constellate Publishing.
We’ve got a bunch of stuff in the works and best of all we’ve got a few books in the pipeline for 2026, when we really gear up. They’re a diverse lot, too.
Here’s a link if you want to know more about Constellate Creatives. There’s a button on the site for more info (services with a foundation of socially responsible pricing based on regional wage numbers), including free consultation.
And I’ll tell you more over the next few weeks.
keithroysdon 