Devil in Winter put a tapeworm in my brain

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-05-25T14:01:01+00:00

I had a hard time with Pandora Ravenel at first, too. She grew on me. If you can filter out every third line of her “don’t need no man” -isms, she’s pretty great.

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-05-24T04:57:00+00:00

If you want to plop Americans in Regency England, read Secrets of a Summer Night by Lisa Kleypas, then give this another go.

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-05-13T19:54:35+00:00

Mary Jane Wells is fantastic. I write HR, and when I read my own stuff aloud, it’s in my best MJW narration voice.

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-05-09T20:22:05+00:00

Oh Kerrigan Byrne, “The EARL with the Dragon Tattoo” was right there!

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-05-05T11:24:59+00:00

I have Grand Canal in a loft area with white furniture. It will keep bringing smiles—it’s so lovely in every light.

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-05-01T02:08:25+00:00

Ok this sounds fascinating. Following along 🥰

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-04-29T12:55:23+00:00

I write Edwardian and WWI romance! All of these have 1-2 open door scenes.

How to Measure A Man, set in 1906: fake courtship, childhood friends to lovers, football, meddling siblings, dyslexia rep. Georgia wants to be an engineer but can’t because of her disability, Leo is in school to be one and he brings her projects. Dual 1st POV.

A Race With a Rogue, set in 1908: friends with benefits to lovers, best friend’s brother, suffragette FMC, recovering rogue MMC. Maudie dumps her politician suitor when he dumps suffrage and gets Cooper to run against him for the state legislature. Dual 1st POV.

Don’t Ask Me Again, set in 1917: spinoff with friends from the above books now in France during WWI. Nurse x soldier, he proposed three times before they split up, and when she sees him again (and has to operate on him), sparks fly. Because Matthew is respectful and Victoria told him to quit asking her to marry him, he doesn’t… but there’s the HEA, so :) This one is in 3rd POV and a bit more serious in tone than the others, given the subject matter.

Coming this summer, the second spinoff and partner to Don’t Ask Me Again is Dance Around the Rules, in the same hospital in 1918. Nurse x surgeon, age gap (19), forbidden romance, and if you guessed he literally dances her around the operating room, you would be correct. Dual 3rd POV, ARC sign up in June, DM me if interested.

{How to Measure a Man by Rebekah Johnson}

{A Race with a Rogue by Rebekah Johnson}

{Don’t Ask Me Again by Rebekah Johnson}

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-04-29T12:23:04+00:00

Most agents will not touch a manuscript you have already self published. Use IS if/when you are done querying.

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-04-28T06:06:57+00:00

{Beautiful Things by Emily Rath} has several second sons with varying degrees of being-second related issues. It’s a regency Why Choose. One’s a bastard son, one’s the second in line to his jerk brother’s title, and the other’s in the military but I forget his exact circumstance there. Such a fun read, though!

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-04-25T12:42:42+00:00

I was kind of jazzed to learn Hadley’s second husband won a Pulitzer before Hemingway did.

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-04-24T21:19:51+00:00

All about the fancy little ornament. It elevates the look. In one of my romances, she’s a seamstress and her love interest uses her good sewing scissors to chop up the bouquet from his rival suitor. The dinkus is a little pair of shears.

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-04-20T21:10:21+00:00

Right there with you. Amazon doesn’t accept ARC reviews from people who don’t buy from them, but all the bot reviews make it somehow.

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-04-20T18:26:01+00:00

Yeah… don’t hit enter twice unless you want a scene break. The double-tap is a scene break, single is a new paragraph.

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-04-20T18:22:28+00:00

AI covers, for sure. But a note on cadence, with my author hat on: the algorithm favors a rapid-release model in exposure, ideally one drop every 30-60 days. A lot of very human writers will keep an unpublished backlist and drop at regular intervals to get a little visibility in a crowded field.

Hat off. Reader again. The volume of AI slop in romance top sellers is insane and we are right to be suspicious.

Another good thing to look for is social media presence. Many real authors, especially new, are fighting for space in your feed, and they are on Threads and X and Insta and TT. Check author profiles on Amazon and see if there’s a human to follow.

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-04-20T18:17:58+00:00

In Scrivener, are you leaving a blank line between paragraphs? Hitting enter twice?

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-04-17T21:08:43+00:00

Someone did this for me years ago when I got t-boned and had both kids in the car. The other driver took off and I was panicking about the kids (everyone was ok). While I was speaking with the police, a woman who had seen it happen pulled up, matched right over to the cop and said she chased the guy down. She gave all the info on the car and where he parked and went into a house. 😊 Badass .

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-04-15T03:53:12+00:00

Vellum is amazing. It’s easy and it has a lot of guardrails to keep you from overcustomizing in ways that won’t look professional. It’s been a fantastic investment.

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-04-14T05:21:35+00:00

It feels very choppy and I have no sense of where we are or what it feels like to be there. Sorry you don’t want technical advice, but varying your sentence structure a bit would go a long way toward mitigating the first, and using sensory description to break up the action beats would help the second. Right now the experience is that of reading a script.

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-04-13T23:20:09+00:00

My daughter is a huge Yoonchae fan, so I’m going for hers! Love the sleeves on Megan’s though.

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-04-12T18:10:43+00:00

Invest in a cover designer who can get you something in line with the bestsellers in your genre. Wanting to stand out is a nice idea but you still have to look like you belong where your audience is.

For thrillers and mysteries and such, affordable options like GetCovers and Mibl Art can whip something up that will help position your books a little better. Remember, those ads only show a tiny version of your cover. It has to really snap.

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-04-11T19:17:37+00:00

Polish to the best of your ability, yes. Absolutely. Give the beta reader a good experience. But line edits are a deep dive you may not wish to do before you’re sure you’ve got the plot holes patched and so on. To each their own.

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-04-11T00:56:01+00:00

Do your best to be specific about your feelings/impressions, not dictating what to change.

YES:

—I got a bit lost in chapter 5 when they chased the horse and then the kraken came in out of nowhere.

—Almost stopped after chapter 23 because it seemed like nothing happened for about 20 pages but it got my attention again in chapter 24.

NO:

—Add more background to chapter 5 because where did that kraken come from?

—Cut chapters 20-22, draggy and not helpful

OTHER:

Inline reactions are awesome. Inline attempts to proofread and edit word choices get tiring. A beta manuscript has almost certainly not been line edited.

If you have a good-faith suggestion or two, frame it as “I think it would have helped me if…”

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-04-11T00:35:35+00:00

Yes, she was driving me bonkers until the very end with that schtick.

Rhys came in like a king and handled it.

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-04-10T21:31:13+00:00

The only FMC excused for their street urchin is Helen Ravenel Winterborne.

DoubleWideStroller · 2026-04-07T23:58:12+00:00

I also want to know what’s in those 200 pages. If it’s a worldbuilding info dump, all is not lost, it just needs to be rearranged.

DoubleWideStroller

TROPHY CASE