Rhoda Baxter's Blog

Facebook helpfully showed me this image and told me this was 8 years ago! A Royal Wedding was the first book that I wrote under my real name. It was a commission (IP project) and was written and published at breakneck speed to coincide with a certain royal wedding. By the time the paperback came out, the cover was different, the title was changed to ‘Christmas At the Palace’ and a Christmas portion was added.

It started my ‘Jeevani Charika’ era!

It marked a (slight)change in direction ...

This book is about midlife and adapting to having an empty nest.
Becca’s daughter Sophie has gone off to university and Becca is feeling lost without her. Then her mother, Josephine, breaks her wrist and needs someone to look after her, so Becca goes over to help.

As a woman in her 50s, I can completely relate to the problems Becca had! We are the sandwich generation – looking after our aging parents and bringing up children. I understood Becca’s discombobulation when all the ‘certainities...

There is a job of shop manager going on the beautiful Island of Omer. Charlie Jones is really looking forward to accepting the job. But on the day, two people turn up. Both with the same letter offering them the job. Both called Charlie Jones.
Which one of them is the real Charlie Jones? Does it matter?

As Charlie (who wants to embark on solo motherhood) and Jones (who wants to a place to reinvent himself and stay sober) share a job, and a home, meant for only one person, they get to know ...

Remember when trope graphics were all the rage? You had your book cover and then some curly arrows pointing to the tropes and themes that are in the book.

I think these are still a really good thing to have – people skim read and you can convey quite a lot of information in one of these graphics. If someone doesn’t read your sort of book, they’ll scroll past (which is fine, they were never going to buy you book anyway), but for someone who loves you genre – you’re hitting them with the m...

I often write books to make myself a place to escape to. During lockdown, I dreamed of cosy, low angst places and I dreamed of community. I’d had an idea of a cosy romantic story set against the background of a heritage steam railway, so I decided to write that. I fell in love with the group of friends (and I already loved steam trains), so I wrote two more.

Now I’m finally releasing these books. Here’s book 1 of the Brambleberry Steam Railway series – The Valentine’s Express. Here’s the cov...

There’s huge excitement in our house today because I can finally talk about my news. Two of my books have been shortlisted for the RNA awards this year.

How Can I Resist You? (written as Jeevani Charika) and Christmas With The Secret Tycoon (written as Rhoda Baxter) have both made it onto the shortlists in different categories.

These books were written under different pen names for two different publishers. I am beyond delighted to have two shortlistings in one year!

Chr...

Typography matters. You can make a cover look much more professional, simply by using more genre appropriate fonts.

I make a lot of romance and fantasy covers and we love a swirly font. But the cardinal rule for book cover text is that The Title Must Be Legible (even in thumbnails). Often, the handwritten and swirly fonts look messy. Or worse, they make your title read like something else.

Last week, I spotted a poster for a film which was apparently called ‘The Faff’. The title was ‘T...

*I made this in February, when I was supporting the RomFicFeb26 drive that the Romantic Novelists Association were doing. Also, I was still persevering with the new video editor at the time I made this. I’ve gone back to the old editor now.*

Here’s a tutorial on how to make a layered text effect where your books fall through the text.

The example I’ve used leans towards romance. I know not everyone writes romance, so please comment and let me know what genre you write. I’ll try and make s...

It seems that Goodreads has added a new ‘Did Not Finish’ (DNF) shelf to their interface. As an author, this strikes me as cruel and unnecessary. But here’s the thing. Goodreads isn’t there for writers. It’s there for READERS.

As a writer, I approach Goodreads like it’s a room where I KNOW a large spider is hiding. Negative reviews on Goodreads can be brutal. If reviewers don’t like a book, they are not afraid to let you know their opinions. Writers generally treat Goodreads with caution.

Canva now lets you create interesting and interactive landing pages. I use a simple email collection page as an example, but you can do things like puzzles and quizzes too.

If part of your collection page includes a field for the person to put in their email address – then you can collect their email address.

If you use Mailchimp – you’re in luck, there’s an integration option.

For all ...