2020 Goals

FA6E37F0-1AED-4F77-B3CB-56378961C5C3Guess what my 2020 New Year’s Resolution is?

To get back to committing daily to get Infinite Salvation, Book 5 published!

I know how patient you all have been and I appreciate everyone’s support. You’re all saints! Honestly, I’m so touched that you are even still thinking about the series and reaching out to me, begging for an update. So you deserve a 2020 update and game plan.

John Lennon’s quote “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans” rings true. Even though I think about the last book and my characters daily; even though I research the huge topics I have planned to tackle in book 5 incessantly; I haven’t been able to keep to any writing schedule.

One of the big reasons that I decided to self publish was because I needed to have the flexibility to write around caring for my young family. Because of unfair female biological constraints I only have this time to grow my family. I’ve now had my fifth sweet little baby and I don’t want to take any time away from fully enjoying her in these fleeting moments of childhood. I can always write later but these precious moments will not come again. However, now that my little girl is seven months old, I do feel like it’s time to plan at least an hour commited to actually writing each day. I’m not going to set a release date or over promise but I will start to stick to at least one hour a day.

Originally, I had a clear plan of how this series would end but God had something else in store. Luckily my reader base is highly spiritual so you might believe that I had an amazing spiritual intervention to get a specific unplanned message out. It did throw me for a life changing loop and I had to go within myself for serious introspection and dive into fathoms of endless research. It might throw all my readers for a loop too so I had to think about these changes for awhile and decide upon the best way to make it my story.  I’ve never researched so much in my life and honestly there might not be an end to such profound meaning of life topics but it’s getting clearer and clearer what I’m destined to do with this most cherished series of mine.

The expected schedule for a series is a new installment each year, yet I’ve now had two children between my last publication. I don’t write for income but to attempt to deliver an engaging, spiritual journey to you, my lovely readers. I take it so seriously and do not want to regret finishing this in a hurry and failing to reach all the most transformative messages that will hopefully help you to understand your journey as well.

Have faith in me and send good creative energy my way✨

 

 

And the winner is…

TRACEY!!!

With the assistance of my two-year-old, your name was pulled out of the hat. Congratulations, Tracey, you have won the paperback set of the Infinite Series (books 1-4). I’ll reply on your comment with my email address and you can send me your shipping address at your convenience.

To all who entered, thank you so much for reading Infinite Faith and leaving a review. Whenever I see I have a new review I wish I could personally thank each person who takes the time to write one. I know how hard it is to take that time out and I actually find reviews so hard to write myself. I’m so pleased with how Infinite Faith has been received. It’s a relief to see that my readers like where I’ve taken the story.

Sorry if you didn’t win this time, but rest assured, I will make the same offer when I release Book 5 for the complete paperback series.

~Lauren

Series Giveaway Reward!

Many readers have told me that after reading the series on their readers, they want to purchase the entire set in paperback to have for their collection. So in celebration of finally publishing Infinite Faith Book 4, I thought it would be a great idea giveaway A WHOLE SET (Books 1-4) in print to one worthy reader. Infinite Sacrifice Book 1, Infinite Devotion Book 2, Infinite Loss Book 3 & Infinite Faith Book 4, valued at $57.84 + shipping, will be yours for free!!!

InfiniteSacrifice5_5x8_5_Cream_290_2_3

InfiniteDevotion5_5x8_5_BW_450_2-1InfiniteLoss5_5x8_5_BW_680_2_2InfiniteFaith_BookCover5_5x8_5_BW_580They look so pretty all together and feel so good in your hands!

In order to enter the giveaway:

  1. Read Infinite Faith
  2. Post an honest review where you purchased it
  3. Paste the review in the comments on this post with the review site you posted it on
  4. Be sure to select that you will be notified on reply so that I can notify you if you win

This giveaway will be over June 1st in order to give people time to read Infinite Faith. Winner will be picked at random and notified June 1st through this blog. If you win, I’ll request an address to where they will be shipped and will let you know when you should expect them. Due to shipping costs (these books are heavy!) this giveaway will only be eligible for my US fans…sorry 😦

And let me clarify honest review. You can say whatever you would like about Infinite Faith and you can still win the set of Infinite Series books. To repeat, winner will be picked at random, not based on how glowing their review is. This will be a good way to get lots of reviews up so that people can find out more about Infinite Faith (good or bad) before they purchase it. Plus I LOVE to hear your feedback!

*On a side note, I apologize to all my nook readers since it took an extra day for Infinite Faith to be published. It’s live now and click here for the link. I’m going to keep the at $4.99 until tomorrow so that you all get a chance to get the deal.

~Lauren

 

May 1st is Here!

And with it, my long-awaited release of the fourth book of my series, Infinite Faith. I’m very proud of this book and hope you will all enjoy it.

DSC_0083

You can purchase it right now (and take advantage of the one-day $4.99 discount price of the ebook) at the following locations, simply click on the link:

Amazon

Amazon UK

Kobo

Smashwords

Amazon Print Copy ($15.99)

Nook, Googleplay, iBooks and Sony will be up shortly.

Please take the time to leave some much needed reviews on this new book. It helps me so much! Thank you so much for your patience and support. I have the BEST fans!

Happily, this is not the last book. Infinite Salvation (Book 5) is already in the works and stay tuned for updates on its progress. It will most definitely be the caboose of my series and, with a tinge of sadness but so much joy, I look forward to completing the series.

~Lauren

Infinite Faith Pre-Order Available

Hello my lovely fans,

I’m pleased to say I made the pre-order deadline by one day and Infinite Faith is up on pre-order on Amazon here.

infinitefaith- small ebookThis is the first time I’ve used pre-order so this is new to me. Self-publishing is a constantly evolving process much of time leaving me to play catch-up on the new technologies and options.Because I don’t want my fans to loose out on the one-day sale I planned on release day I’m setting the pre-order price at the release day sale price. The price will go back to $5.99 on May 2nd so grab it up before then!

~Lauren

Infinite Faith Release Date & Cover Reveal

I’m so happy to say to all my patient fans that Infinite Faith (Infinite Series Book 4) will be released May 1st!

It has taken longer than I predicted due to the ENORMOUS restoration project that I’ve taken on which I’m still slaving away at on weekends, but that is another story and another book!

Infinite Faith was originally going to include three past lives, but after much thought and feedback, the story can’t end here and a fifth book is needed to complete the story. I know that is welcome news for many of you that have begged for the Infinite Series to go on and, after writing much of the third life of Infinite Faith, I realized that as much as you might plan a book, its characters develop a life of their own and take the story in their own direction. I was going to deviate from the original story format since I thought it would be exciting, but it just didn’t feel right. Therefore, Infinite Faith will include two fantastic lives, it’s on its way to being published and I’ve got some of Book 5 (Infinite Salvation) finished already!

Enough about that, I’m sure what you really want to see is the gorgeous cover S. Frost Designs created for me. This might be my favorite cover yet!

infinitefaith- small ebook

I also want everyone on my website to have a heads up that the eBook will be $4.99 instead of $5.99 for the first day only, so mark that date on your calendar (but I will still send out a reminder mass email that morning). I want you all the get that deal since it’s the only time I discount the later books. In return for the discount, I would be so appreciative for honest reviews since they are so important for new releases. Thanks so much for waiting for this fourth book and for your awesome support!

Check Out The New Infinite Series Covers!!!

The results of the cover updating poll were close. Even though the poll leaned more towards keeping the original covers (which makes me happy that so many people loved them!), people emailed and left blog comments who couldn’t vote through the poll that they wanted to see it updated. So I started working on the free ebook redesign I won from the amazing Sylvia Frost and here it is:

(Drum roll please…)

Old cover (I do still love you):

Infinite Sacrifice - L.E. Waters

New cover:

Ta Da!

Infinite Sacrifice 2015 cover

Of course, I couldn’t stop from doing the whole series after seeing this one. I love how it still gives me the same feeling the original did, but it just adds a little more pizzazz. Sylvia went straight to work redesigning the rest of the series (no, I’m not going to show you Infinite Faith yet, but it’s sooo pretty!) However, I will show you Infinite Devotion:

(Cue the fireworks..)

Old Cover:

InfiniteDevotionFINAL

New Cover:

infinitedevotion_1_3

And here is Infinite Loss:
(Light the cannons…)

Old Cover:

InfiniteLossCoverWeb

New Cover:

infiniteloss_1_3

Sylvia gave me three different mock ups to decide between and one of them appealed so much to me that we decided to put it on the back cover of the paperback version. I loved how they gave the ghostly impression of her past lives.

InfiniteSacrifice5_5x8_5_Cream_290_2_3

InfiniteDevotion5_5x8_5_BW_450_2-1

InfiniteLoss5_5x8_5_BW_680_2_2

Well, please let me know what you think! Do you love them or are you still attached to the old ones?

(PS-I haven’t changed them all over on my distributors yet so if you love the old ones you can go by a print copy of them still.)

Maybe one day I’ll make a special edition of the original covers, but all I want to do right now is stare at these beauties! I can’t wait to hold them all in paperback form!

And to anyone who is looking for an extremely professional (and patient) cover artist, I highly recommend S. Frost Cover Design.

I better get back to writing Infinite Faith now…

Help Decide If the Infinite Series Needs Updated Covers!

Infinite Sacrifice - L.E. Waters

I’ve been away from my blog for so long that WordPress changed on me and I had to completely relearn how to do this. Hopefully, I’ll be able to figure out how to attach a poll or this post will be pointless.

InfiniteDevotionFINALAwesome news! I won a free ebook cover design from the crazy talented (check out her portfolio) Sylvia Frost from S.F. Designs. I never really won anything before (except a $25 raffle at a doll house fair) and I couldn’t believe it when I saw my name—I guess this means I won’t have much chance winning the HGTV Dreamhome sweepstakes that I’ve been signing up for everyday 😦 The strange thing is that I was seriously thinking about updating my covers lately.

InfiniteLossCoverWebI knew exactly what I wanted on my covers before I published and I just needed to find someone who could put together what I saw in my mind. I wanted that infinity sign to be my brand and I wanted it to change with my main character’s progress through the series. The background photo I found on iStock after hours of searching though images and it just spoke to me. Since my book is so complicated, I thought a simple book cover works best. When I first saw this cover in my hands, I cried. It truly meant so much to me.

Which is why it’s hard to change it, but I realize that it’s a good idea to keep updating these things in hopes of drawing a larger readership. So my dear readers/blog followers/author friends, do you think they should stay just the way they are (I haven’t even revealed Infinite Faith’s cover..it’s my favorite yet) or would you like to see what Sylvia Frost can do to jazz them up? If I hear that most of you are attached to the original then I can always make a cover for the next project that I can’t wait to write 🙂 Either way, I LOVE creating covers!

Please take a minute to vote here to decide the Infinite Series cover fate. And I won’t have any hurt feelings or I wouldn’t have asked! Thanks so much for helping me make this big decision!

More Than a Year Flew By…

I realize that guessing your blog’s password three times is a good indicator of blog neglect. I feel terrible that things have gotten so busy that I’ve had to drop updating this blog. I used to love coming here like my weekly therapy session to vent/celebrate my latest writing/publishing adventures. The support I found from other authors and readers on here truly helped me grow and I thank you all for that.

Life just sped up for me this last year. The kiddos are growing and changing almost everyday and I have to keep evolving with them in order to keep the balance of nature in our house. Yet, the thing that consumes most of my free time is a huge project we took on last Christmas that had always been a dream. It has proven to be a much bigger project than I could ever have imagined. We decided to purchase a lovely old gingerbread Victorian on the Jersey shore that needed to be restored to its former glory (I’ve been watching way too many Nicole Curtis-Rehab Addict episodes…it’s all her fault).

At first, we thought that we could purchase it and hold off on the major work for a year or two, but that was before we found knob and tube wiring 😦 Then everything had to be opened up and we found other delightful problems of course. Fast forward almost a year and not much has progressed due to many different issues I won’t go into now. But here’s a peek of what it pretty much looks like throughout the house:

kitchen pic for blog

Just like getting my books out, it is a labor of love that I take very seriously and devote most of my time to researching and planning. I’m obsessed with trying to bring this house back to 1890’s even if it means finding 1890’s salvage from Ebay and Craigslist to make it that way. I spent the last year going down for day trips—a two hour drive each way—with my infant in tow, measuring and planning what needs to be done. Not to mention finding a whole antique tin ceiling, 1920’s gas stove, old barn siding, hand-hewn beams and old plumbing fixtures to the delight of my contractor. It has truly been an adventure of a whole other kind with funny stories, treasure hunts, trial and error, and lessons learned. Halfway through all of this, I decided I needed to document everything for a different type of home improvement book, that will illustrate the changes, but will be told in a storytelling way. To combine two great passions of mine will be exciting. I strive to put books out that I would love to read and I can’t get enough of home improvement shows/books, focusing on restoring old homes and giving DIY tips along the way.

Even though the house restoration is taking up a huge part of my life right now (especially since we keep getting thrown curve balls that call for creative fixes), I have managed to carve out an hour of writing/researching a day. And I am so happy to announce that I’ve finished writing the second life of Infinite Faith. That might not sound like a lot, but at nearly 100,000 words it could easily be a novel on its own and the first life of this book clocks in around 75,000 words. This is still only a first draft and I’ll need to do the proper beta reads and revisions on it, but it’s progress and I know my loyal fans have been patiently waiting for this next installment so it might help them wait a little longer for the last life of the book to be written. I’m already cracking open my research books for this next glimpse of history and hopefully the house project issues will die down as things start to fall into place and I can get more writing time this winter.

So, please forgive me for all of my neglect and delays. I still love writing my series and promise to keep sculpting it. Can I give an exact time that it will be released? Not yet. I never expected this last life to be so long, but my stories sometimes take me in unexpected directions. This next life will most likely take me on a similar journey. I can only promise that I won’t put this fourth installment out until it is everything I’ve dreamed it to be. Thank you all for being so patient and supportive (and sending good vibes to my little gingerbread house is also greatly appreciated).