Today, with not much to do since I sent it all in and am just waiting, I went back to the Wattpad post about another author's journey with FP. They posted their evaluation and I was interested to see, does everyone at FP act really kind and nice because they're getting our money?

Yes and no. Obviously the initial contact and the people working with us are going to be very kind, they're customer service reps, sales consultants. This author's evaluation was harsher than mine. Their manuscript was sent back for being improperly formatted. They had HEAPS of adjectives that needed to be removed. Problems with compound words. The editor still liked the content, but was a lot harsher on grammatical errors that needed changes. So yeah, I felt pretty good about myself.

With my cover design, my publishing specialist asked me if I wanted three similar covers, or three drastically different covers. I have nothing in mind for a cover. I'm a little torn because I don't want it to look "young", but at the same time, my book is for a young adult crowd. It's such a loose retelling that I don't want it to be heavily focused on the Red Riding Hood side of things. But I decided I wanted three drastically different covers to choose from, and I also get two hours of revision time included with what I paid for.

The publishing specialist is as excited (possibly more so) than me to see what the designers come up with. I feel welcomed and encouraged with my team.

On another note, I had lots of forms to fill out. Answering questions about myself, my book, why I wrote it, etc. It was harder than I thought. Talking about my book verbally, awesome, I'm pretty good at that. But typing it out? It kept sounding weird. But eventually I got into the flow of it and felt more confident with my answers. I mentioned my book was indeed part of a series, and suddenly I had to come up with a title for the series.

I have been struggling with this since I decided to make this book a part of a series a few years back. "Dark Fantasy Series" is not good. "Dark Fairy Tales" doesn't quite work. After all, these are genres, niche categories, and not perfectly accurate either.

So, what did four -possibly five- books that were never intended to be a series that I made into a series have to connect them? Well, at first they were fairy tale retellings. Then they weren't. So, not a good theme to make the focus when I divert dramatically away from that theme in later books. Alright, well, it's not all about the same characters, not at all. Book two and Book one have so little connecting them, they could both be read on their own.

Well this is tiring.

So I did what any good millennial would do.

After I figured out what connected all the books -blood/bloodlines- I threw a poll up on Instagram. I don't have a lot of followers and I am working on that, but enough people voted that I felt confident. Some reached out to me and suggested things, or said they liked one version but with a change up of words.

I got my answer, I waffled a bit with what sounded right. But I knew I needed the series to have a name, for future books will be easier to find. It's important for readers to be able to find them, to be able to refer to a series name. "The Blood Bound Series" was what I went with. Because all the books are somewhat disjointed, over hundreds of years/time periods, there aren't really characters in particular that worked as an umbrella name. But what connected them all was blood. All the characters are either connected through blood lines, blood bonds, or eat blood (Vampires). Blood Magic is also prominent in the books, so yeah, blood was what I went with.

Another issue I ran into, the title. How does "Red" stand out? It doesn't. Not at all. And the sequel is similar, using a main characters name as the title, but the following sequels are NOT names. I am kinda anal with these things, but I had to let it go. Thinking up a new title at this point was not going to do me any favours, so I stuck with it. It may not be the most memorable or stand-out title, but it is the title that the book has fit under for many years.