V.M. Rose's Blog

This morning a wonderful reader reached out to me to let me know that Breaking Ch 2 was blank. I did an update on my links and I somehow accidentally added a blank chapter 2. You are not missing any content and you can just keep reading. It was just an added chapter, I have already sent the update to Amazon, it just takes time to process. I apologize in advance if this happens to you or if your book copy is like this. Please contact me and let me know if it is.

authorvictoriamaurer@gmail.com

Sorry for any inconvenience,

Vicki

Only a few more days to go! ARC's are out, final edits are in, I went through my author copy, and I only have a few more days to go before the final deadline to upload to Amazon is here. Then book 2 in the Challenge Me Series will be live! I have been working on this book for just over a year. I just looked at the original file to see when it was created and it was on June 7th. I was still finishing Breaking, and I was just throwing ideas and quotes and moving things around into the file at that point. I didn't really start writing Broken until July. I finished it up at the end of February/beginning of March and it has been back and forth for edits, BETA reading, and more edits. It has been a long process and I am excited to be publishing it out. I am almost done with Stronger, the third and final book of the series. I hope to have it finished in the next 2 weeks. Right now I have around 64k words written, and just have a few chapters left to write before sending it off for edits, if I can stop procrastinating. I hope to have it ready to publish for my expected date of October 30th. Fingers crossed!

I am so excited to announce that on June 22nd Challenge Me: Broken, book two in the Challenge Me series will be released on Amazon!

Challenges, like lies, have the power to destroy people, to break them. That's what they did to me...

Lizzy

He broke me down and captured me with those blue eyes.

He challenged me both in the pool and in the bedroom and I can't seem to get enough of him.

But he lied to me...

Jason

I saw her as a challenge...something to conquer, only she turned out to be so much more than I expected.

She enchanted me and gave it as good as she got it.

I want her, but I don't know if I will be able to keep her because I have too many secrets.

Jason has a big secret and Lizzy is about to find out what it is. Lizzy unexpectedly finds out that Jason has more secrets than she bargained for and it throws her world upside down. The turmoil of their back and forth relationship opens the door for another man to seduce her...Jason's roommate, Mark. Mark is a Mr. Nice Guy with a tragic past. The friendship that has developed between Lizzy and Mark continues to solidify as they spend more time together. Their friendship adds a complicated layer to this tumultuous triangle of characters which will ultimately be their undoing.

Two college athletes on the swim team together connect on a spicy, complicated, emotional level.

Challenge Me: Breaking by Victoria Maurer is - unashamed and unapologetically - smut. And this reviewer loved it.

The story unfolds when freshman in college, Elizabeth, moves from home for the first time into her college dorm. She is a collegiate level athlete for her school's swim team. (A big appeal for this reviewer, as I was also a swimmer throughout my childhood and teenage years. I appreciated the swim references and it brought up a lot of fond memories!) There, Elizabeth is hoping to focus on her grades and her sport, but ends up meeting Jason.

Jason is the stubborn, beautiful, and challenging sophomore on the swim team. He is mysterious and commanding. Obviously Elizabeth can't resist. What unfolds is a love story between two swimmers that is steamy, steamy, steamy.

I personally read this book really quickly. I was just drawn in so fast, and the way Maurer wrote the explicit scenes felt a lot more realistic than other romance novels. I did find myself eager to read the sequel, so whenever that is released, I'm going to need it ASAP.

The only thing I disliked about this book is that the communication between Elizabeth and Jason was so bad. I'm noticing this is a common trope in romance - it helps create tension and conflict, so I understand it. But gosh, it really bugs me. I don't hold it against the author, but that part was a struggle to me. All of the issues experienced in their relationship could have easily been solved with communication and honest discussion.

This book is a great read for those who love erotic romance novels where no details are held back. I highly suggest it for the melodrama, the blush inducing scenes, and the love story.

See the full review: https://reedsy.com/discovery/book/challenge-me-breaking-victoria-maurer

Challenge Me: Breaking by Victoria Maurer is a sweet debut romance novel to satisfy your desire for raw romance. Elizabeth Dixon (Lizzy) is just starting her college career at Southwestern Connecticut University. Lizzy doesn't know anything about love; she never had a boyfriend, and she isn't interested in having one. She vowed not to fall blindly in love with anyone, as she is focused on doing well in school and swimming so that she can get out of the small town she grew up in for good. However, love happens when you least expect it, and sometimes love can be pretty hard. Lizzy is just about to discover love on her own when she meets Jason. Lizzy and Jason feel instant chemistry, but will the chemistry be enough to start a serious relationship?

Challenge Me: Breaking by Victoria Maurer is a new adult contemporary romance about raw and wild passion, slippery love, and mixed feelings. It's a juicy drama that takes romance, first love, college experiences, second chances, and love triangles to an entirely new level. Victoria Maurer is a romance master. She created spicy sex scenes, characters that draw you in, and a fantastic story filled with moments of intense love and confusion that is too much to bear. Challenge Me: Breaking is a sexy, sometimes painfully real, reading experience like no other. It's the best college romance I've read, and I'm already looking forward to the sequel. I recommend it to romance fans who are looking for a highly addictive love story.

I had an article in the Monroe Sun published about me. You can check it out here!

Hot guys, swimmers, and spice...Oh my! It's official, the first draft of Challenge Me- Broken is done woohoo! l already started working on book number three of the Challenge Me series! I already know what is going to happen, now all I need is the time to get it all done! I am hoping to have the first draft for number three in the series done by the summer. Fingers crossed!

Thanks to some reviews, I went back to the drawing board on my book cover. I got a suggestion that the title should be taking up at least 1/3 of the cover. I punched up the font and hit it with some shadowing and outlines, I used the font Saturday Script at size 250. I used Picmonkey to do the design work, and for the images, I purchased them off of istock. On the general purchase on istock it allows for 500,000 uses. I was going for something simple that stood out and tied to the theme of each book. Picmonkey was really user-friendly and it had a variety of options to choose from as far as sizing and fonts. It did take me a couple of times of trial and error to get the sizing right to fit for Amazon KDP, but it was easy to make the adjustments.

Pro tip: Picmonkey is not free, but they do offer a seven-day trial, so if you know what you want to design, you can sign up and then cancel before you get charged.

Old cover for Challenge Me- Breaking.

The revamped cover- SO. MUCH. BETTER!

AND....here is the mock-up cover for book number two in the series, Challenge Me- Broken

Chasing The Wind

by María Rivera

This was a well-written heartfelt story. I felt like I could have easily sat down with the characters in the book and carried on a conversation with them at their dinner table. The characters were well developed, believable, and interesting. I have never been to Washington Heights, but this book transported me to the community where these characters lived and thrived. The struggles the characters face, bring to light so many real issues that take place every day in communities across the nation, that it makes you grateful for the little things. Their struggles combined with a sprinkling of scripture, drive the lessons of this story home. If you are looking for a feel-good read for the soul, look no further. You can check her book out at the following link!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58128707-chasing-the-wind

Now that you told your family and friends about your accomplishment, you are beginning your marketing outside of your immediate bubble. You are going to want to spread the word on social media. Getting all of the social media up and running and connected together was a little more complicated and time-consuming than I thought it was going to be. First I created my author central page on Amazon. That was relatively quick and easy to do. Setting up a website to host my blog and then connecting it to Amazon, took me hours to do. I am a really tech-savvy person and it was a nightmare trying to figure out how to connect the blog page to my Amazon author

central page.

I finally came across a website and eventually just started punching in random stuff on the keyboard until I got the right combination of code for it to work. Quick Tip: If you are using Wix and trying to connect to author central, the correct combination is to copy your webpage and then add //blog-feed.xml it will link your blog correctly and save you some time...you're welcome! The next thing I did was set up a business IG account and business FB page, set up Twitter, updated Linked in, and then connected all of the accounts so that no matter which platform I posted on, it would share and post to the other. In each of the professional accounts or business accounts (IG, FB, Twitter, Wix) just go to the settings to connect and link everything. Again, all of this took a while to set up and I totally understand while people hire professionals to do it.

Pro Tip: I sent out test posts and test blogs before I told everyone about the accounts, I did this for about several weeks, that way I could see where everything was posting and to make sure that it was all done correctly. It took some adjustments, but I finally got it right. Then I slowly added more and more features, once I knew everything was correct. I also wanted to make sure that when people went to my blog page there were several stories that they could check out, that they were not just looking at one story and leaving the page. Overall, connecting the social media platforms was time-consuming, to say the least, but if you have the patience to figure it out, it is totally doable on your own.