So you want to join the RAGE Street Team….
Friends! It’s been so long!
It’s been a crazy last two years for me. Publishing ROAR was the fulfillment of a long-time dream for me. I’ve been a published romance author since 2012, but in many ways that was a happy accident. I had never actually written a contemporary romance until I wrote the one that blew up and gave me the beautiful career I have today (Thanks Bliss and Garrick, oh and Angry cat Hamlet)! Prior to that, all my unpublished writing had been fantasy or paranormal or supernatural in some way. That was my first writing dream– to write complex worlds and plots of magic and intrigue with unexpected twists and reveals (and kissing, ALWAYS KISSING). Writing and publishing ROAR was such an exhilarating and exciting journey, but if you’ve kept up with me online, you might know that around the same time that dream came true, other parts of my life started to fall apart. I had been having a variety of unexplained health issues for years, but around the time I was working on edits for ROAR, I saw a dramatic increase in the intensity of those problems. It was not until a few months after the release of the book that I found the root of those issues when I was diagnosed epilepsy in October 2017. What followed was a hectic, scary, and grueling year + of experimenting with medications (most of which did not work or made things worse), and during that time my mind was so fragmented from seizures and fogged by medication, that not only could I not write, I could barely even understand the world I had created and the words that I had already written.
I felt like I had lost myself. And I was not sure I would ever find the old me again.
After a brief hospitalization, lots of doctor’s visits, a full pharmacy of meds, ongoing therapy, and a tremendous amount of support from my family, friends, and my publishing team, I’m clawing my way back, not to the old me, but to someone stronger, who has walked through that storm and made it out the other side.
RAGE was a product of that process. It’s a book about a fighter, dealing with a changed world in the best ways she knows how. It’s about surviving and learning to thrive in a life that looks different than what you had imagined for yourself. It’s about hope and love and companionship blooming in even the darkest of situations.
I am excited (and nervous) to share this book with the world. But before it is released wide on August 27th, there will be opportunities for some readers (especially booksellers, librarians, bloggers, bookstagrammers, booktubers, etc) to read the book early as an Advanced Reader Copy (aka ARC). The e-arc is available to request now on Netgalley, in fact.
But if you loved ROAR…
Like… loved it so much that you’re dying a little inside waiting for RAGE…
I have an opportunity you might be interested in!
JOIN THE RAGE STREET TEAM!
MORE ABOUT THE BOOK:
All Aurora Pavan ever wanted was a choice, to control her own life. Now she’s got more choices than she can handle.
Princess or adventurer.
Duty or freedom.
Her Kingdom or the Stormhunter she loves.
If she knows anything, it’s that choices have consequences— like the storm now tangled with her heart, the alarming disappearance of her mother and friend, and the fall of her kingdom to the Locke family. To set things right, she joins a growing revolution on the streets of Pavan. She puts her knowledge of the palace to use to aid the rebellion, but the Lockes aren’t the only sinister thing plaguing Pavan. The Rage season is at it’s peak and not a day passes without the skies raining down destruction. But these storms seem… different than any she’s ever encountered. They churn with a darkness that frightens her, and attack with a will like she’s never seen.
This feels like more than Rage.
It feels like war.
WHAT IS A STREET TEAM?
For me? A street team is like my book’s family. A street team helps promote a book both before and after release. Often, this is done is small ways like:
- Adding or recommending the book on Goodreads
- Requesting your local library order the book
- Sharing your love and excitement on social media and with friends and family
- Pre-ordering the book if you are able from your local bookstore or from any online retailer of your choice
Most of these things can be done by anyone, of course. And trust me, any author will GREATLY appreciate your doing them. But by organizing a street team, readers can often join together with the author and publisher and do even more to help a book. They can participate in marketing plans like excerpt reveals, interviews, Instagram challenges, Twitter chats, and more. They can get creative and be inspired by the book. My past street teams have even organized cool marketing ideas of their own (because they’re fabulous). We hope that the team will be a place that book lovers can use their creativity and skills and excitement to support RAGE and also have a lot of fun!
WHAT DO YOU GET IN RETURN?
As a former book blogger, I know that your time is valuable, and you have a great many choices on how to spend your free hours. Being on a street team IS a time commitment. But I hope several things will make that commitment worth it. First, I try as hard as I can to make my street teams a community. I started my first street team back in early 2014, and I am still in close contact with many members, and I am blessed to count many of them as good friends. We’ll spend a lot of time talking about RAGE, but we’ll also talk about other books we love. We’ll talk about life, and we’ll lean on each other, and I hope you will make many new friends. As a member of the team, you’ll get exclusive sneak peeks at RAGE (and even book three as I work). You’ll also learn behind the scenes info and fun facts that no one else knows, read deleted scenes, have access to private team giveaways and chats with me, and you’ll get first dibs on ARCS*.
*Depending on the size of the team, it may not be possible to guarantee every member a print or e-ARC, but being a Street Team Member definitely gives you the best chance at reading the book early. We will also do our best to organize the team so that those who participate and put in their time are rewarded.
HOW DO I APPLY?
This is the simple part. In previous years, if you applied to my team, you might remember it as a bit of a bloodbath. We typically had hundreds of applications and had to cut it down significantly. The largest team we ever had was 50 people, and even that was BRUTAL to narrow down. The good news is… we are choosing a SIGNIFICANTLY larger team this year. This means we’ll have to adjust some things, and we will be changing up some aspects of our format. For example, we’ll be using a newsletter as our primary form of communication this year, as opposed to the private Facebook group we used in years past (don’t worry, we’ll keep the FB group as a hangout). To that end, this year’s application is a little less intense. But we still want to get to know you, so we have some questions we would like you to answer. You just need to fill out the form below.
APPLICATIONS ARE DUE BY MAY 5TH.
Seriously. May 5th. That’s the end date. So tell everyone you know who might be interested.
APPLY NOW. *
*Applications do not guarantee acceptance onto the team. But as I mentioned, we’re trying to open up and involve more people this year, so the odds are definitely MUCH MORE in your favor. 🙂 And as always, I try to choose my teams with an eye to harmony and passion and a balance of skillsets and interests. I’m not looking at your follower count as the bottom line.
If you are interested in knowing more about the Street Team, I will be chatting Live on Instagram this Sunday at 6pm CDT (7pm EDT) with a longtime member of my street team and my good friend, Megan from Novel Grounds. We’ll talk about past street teams, what will be different this time, and because Megan is one of the lucky few who has already read RAGE, you can bet we’ll be talking about that! So make sure you are following me on Instagram (@CoraCarmack) and come hang out on Sunday! I made sure it did not interfere with Game of Thrones. Haha.
And now for the FIRST EVER RAGE ARC GIVEAWAY!!!!
This giveaway is open internationally, and also closes on MAY 5TH, just like the street team applications. There are multiple ways to enter, and you can enter once a day for several of them. Also, have a picture of the pretties.
So I hope you get lucky! Click here to enter.*
*Puppy Sherlock not included in giveaway.
Thanks for reading! And I cannot wait for you all to dive back into the Stormheart Universe with me!
With all my Awkward <3,
Cora
P.S. For those awaiting news on other books, I’m sorry I don’t have any specifics on that front. As I mentioned at the beginning, I got very far behind on both book things and life during my health struggles over the last few years. I am improving, but during all that time, my to-do list kept piling up. I’m chipping away and hopeful I’ll have news later this year, but this is definitely a race that will need to be slow and steady in order to maintain the progress I’ve made. As always, I appreciate your patience.
