How To Get The Most Out Of The Lazuli Portals!

Hint: We’re about more than simply writing and publishing our stories!

So we thought we’d compile a post to weave together all the colourful strands of our design so that you can get a better idea of the broader picture! (Maybe there’s something here that you’ll discover for the first time!)

While ‘The Lazuli Portals’ is our partnership and business name, the words also represent the trilogy of novels that we’ve been writing: books about spiritual awakening, featuring stone circles, crystals, parallel worlds, synchronicities, and life-force energy. When it comes to writing, this is our first ‘calling’, and where our writing journey began.

You can find out more about our books here.

You can find out more about us, and how we teamed up, here.

If you are particulary interested in soul connections, then we have our interview with Soulmate Experience here.

Aligned with following that calling, we also offer some ‘bonuses’ on our website, little extras that Joanna created when she was running her Winter Jasmine Reiki business. Now that she’s focusing solely on writing, all those freebies have been incorporated into The Lazuli Portals website.

There are

:: free Reiki self-attunements (Rose Quartz, Smoky Quartz, and Clear Quartz)

:: images infused with life-force energy (to give you a boost)

:: beautiful images featuring quotes from the books

:: information about orbs of life (similar to the lovelight orbs we mention in the novels) and

:: information about hand mudras and a free little ‘taster’ of the Gyan mudra energy

(and more!)

Also linking with the Lazuli Portals trilogy of novels are our Cordello Quest A-Z blog posts relating to concepts, ideas, and characters within the trilogy. So if you’re a fan of the novels, and like to explore ‘around’ the books that you read, you might enjoy those! So far we’ve written for the letters A-K, beginning with A is for Ascended Reikan, and ending with K is for Kaleidoscope. L is for Lovelight will be coming soon!

Much as we enjoy writing about life-force energy, spiritual growth, and crystals, we are sometimes tempted in other directions, such as paranormal suspense; we also write flash fiction, poetry and haiku. If that’s up your street then you’ll find lots of micro-fiction and poetry on our blog.

In addition, our little ebook  Crystal, Fire and Water is free for Amazon Kindle and also available through Smashwords for other ereader software.

If you enjoy short stories, then our collections The House of the Stormwind and other short stories and Dark Perfume: Tales of Light and Shadow are also available.

For those of you who are fans of YouTube, then we do have our own channel, which usually gets updated when we launch a new book. Our clips include readings from our stories, and also an interview.

If you enjoy book reviews, then take a look at our Recommended Read blog posts, some of which relate to fiction, others non-fiction. We may be expanding this series in the future to include guided meditation tracks and healing resources – and possibly colouring books for grown-ups! We don’t receive any financial recompense for any of the books or products we review: they’re simply shared because we want to.

                

What about if you want to get in touch with us? Well, obviously you can leave a comment on any of our blog posts – but we’re also on Facebook and Twitter, sharing items we think will uplift, interest, or amuse. Or you can contact us privately through the contact forms on our website or blog, or reply to us when we send you a Newsletter (you can sign up for that here).

If you’re local to Devon/Cornwall, maybe you’ll see us with a stall at a mind-body-spirit fair! We’re happy to sign our books for readers buying from us in-person. 🙂

Ron at Harewood House, waiting for opening time!

Joanna on Day One at Crocadon Sawmill MBS Fair

Phew – putting all that together makes us realise what a lot we’ve achieved over the last few years! Are there any in the list that you didn’t know about – and are now glad that you did?!

We hope at least some of what we’ve shared with you above will be useful to you. If you have friends or family who’d enjoy our ‘offerings’, please do let them know about us! We’re independent authors, so every positive share or recommendation is valuable to us!

Many thanks for reading!

Joanna and Ron | The Lazuli Portals

The Importance and Fun of Story Titles

The title of a story or book is like a headline. It either grabs you in some way (not literally, of course) … or it doesn’t. Take the following ten titles – what images, feelings, or questions do they bring to mind?

• To Kill a Mockingbird
• The Enchanted Wood
• A Game of Thrones
• The Kite Runner
• A Discovery of Witches
• Swallows and Amazons
• The Winter Ghosts
• Pride and Prejudice
• Gone With The Wind
• The Hobbit

In my opinion, choosing a title for a book or short story can be almost as much fun as writing the story itself!

It got me thinking about how Ron and I came up with the titles for our published books and short stories.

 

The Cordello Quest

In the course of writing our first novel, the name Cordello popped into my mind from nowhere. That, of course, became the magical parallel world in which Keira unexpectedly finds herself.

It wasn’t until we’d finished the first draft and realised we wanted to ‘make this a proper novel’ that we considered what we’d call it! Having Cordello in the title seemed an obvious decision!

It took us a little longer to work out the rest of the title, one which we felt honestly conveyed the heart of the story.

The word “quest” conjures up a journey, a search … and, by extension, a seeker; that seemed to reflect both the story itself, and the alchemical process of writing our first novel together. We knew The Cordello Quest was perfect as soon as we hit on the combination. It was a keeper!

 

The House of the Stormwind and Other Short Stories

We love this title, which was taken from our short story of the same name. The word stormwind was inspired by Welsh rock band Dare, who remain a firm favourite of mine!

I like the way House of the Stormwind inspires a sense of elemental power and mystery – perfect for a house which is seeking resolution to ‘the Stormwind curse’! The title certainly captured the imagination of some of our readers!

This title seemed a good fit for the book as a whole, right from the point we started bringing this collection of tales together.

 

Crystal, Fire and Water

Our free ebook contains many micro-stories and four short stories of around 1000 words, but none of their titles felt right for the book. Perhaps that’s because Crystal, Fire and Water contains so many individual and diverse stories written over a number of months.

In this instance we therefore decided to entitle the book based upon a few of its themes: the fire of the trainee magician and of Three Matches; the water in which Keira and Jason see lovelight; the crystal cave which draws Keira’s attention and imagination inward.

 

Mosaic of Light

The title of our second novel was a natural consequence of the story’s own progression. Although I don’t plan the novels, for once, I knew ahead of time that there would be a “mosaic of light” featured in the novel, and that it would be key to the story’s development.

So this time the title was fixed long before the first draft of the book was finished. Being a lightworker, it also felt really good having the word “light” in the title. Our cover designer certainly seized on that when he was crafting Mosaic of Light’s cover!

 

Dark Perfume: Tales of Light and Shadow

Dark Perfume is not the longest story in this collection of tales, but we believed it gave the right “feel”. (It also piqued Ron’s imagination when it came to designing the book’s cover, and I think he did a grand job!)

Light and Shadow also suggests to readers that in this volume of short stories, darker tales lurk between the lighter-hearted ones.

Here’s a screenshot of Dark Perfume’s Table of Contents.

Of the 33 titles listed, are there any that you particularly like?

Many of the short stories we publish were originally written for Writers’ Circle meetings, where the word limit is 1000. Our year’s ‘schedule’ gives us a choice of two titles for each meeting; it can be surprising where a word prompt like this can lead for different writers.

Of those particular tales, some have retained their ‘original’ titles e.g. Rose Gold, Behind Closed Doors, Ebb Tide, The Wanderer. Other stories felt more comfortable wearing a new title e.g. The Wanderlust Girls, and The Quiet Invasion.

It can be fun to pick a title (either at random or by design) and let a story flow from there, just to see where it takes your imagination. It can be just as much fun to write an entire book and then ponder what to call it. 😉

At the end of the day, it’s all about the words, your imagination, and the pictures you make in your mind …

Which Lazuli Portals titles are your favourite(s), and what other book titles have teased at your imagination?

Joanna and Ron | The Lazuli Portals

The Lazuli Portals’ Short Story Ebooks Now Available In Paperback

Now for our second post of the week (you can read the first one here).

Our short story collections are now available in paperback!

Over the last few months, Ron and I have been working to bring you The House of the Stormwind and other short stories and Crystal, Fire and Water in print “duo-book” format. We know that we have some readers who prefer “physical books” – after all, who can resist the sight, smell, and touch of stories bound in paper and ink? 🙂

We’ll be selling these duo-books at our book signings and other author appearances (starting this Saturday!) Don’t they look great?!

These two books have been available as ebooks for a while now (Kindle, Nook, PDF, etc.) however we felt it was time that we offered all four of our books in paperback, to as many readers as possible. It made sense to combine both short story books into one volume – you might be surprised by how Ron decided to achieve that ….!

• The duo-book is about 150 pages in length and will be priced at £4.50.
• It is only available through us (i.e. not through Amazon or bookstores).
• We are able to send by post to UK readers, the postage & packing charge for this being £1.50.
• For Overseas readers: a duo-book posted to the USA will be charged at £9.50. For other countries, we can provide a price on application.

If you’d like to order any of the duo-books, please get in touch by email or through the contact form on our blog or website, and we’ll send you a Paypal invoice. (You don’t need to have a Paypal account; credit cards can be processed through the Paypal system.)

It’s always an exciting moment when an author (or in our case, two authors!) sees their hard work in print; it somehow makes it more real, with a sense of permanence. So we’re a bit excited to finally see our short stories in paperback. 😀

Joanna & Ron | The Lazuli Portals

Knock, Knock – A Giveaway of ‘The House of the Stormwind’ at Jera’s Jamboree

Knock, knock … we’ve been invited to take part in Samhain Week over at Jera’s Jamboree. 🙂

 

We share our Hallowe’en-themed  1111-word story, Knock, Knock

~ and ~

we are offering TWO lucky winners a copy of our ebook, The House of the Stormwind and other short stories.

 

 

The winners will receive a mobi (Kindle) or PDF version, whichever format is preferred.

To be in with a chance to win, hop over to Jera’s Jamboree and enter the Rafflecopter Giveaway! 🙂

We look forward to seeing you there, and hope you enjoy reading Knock, Knock!

Joanna & Ron | The Lazuli Portals

Thank you

It’s nine days since the launch of The House of the Stormwind, and we have just about caught our breath! (We both have other businesses in addition to this one, so we’re usually pretty busy even without a book launch!)

We wanted to thank everyone  who joined us at our Facebook party / launch; it was a lot of fun, and good to chat to so many of you. You were so supportive, and with writing being a mostly solitary occupation, that support – and friendship – means a lot!

It’s great to see our book ‘flying off the shelves’, too – we hope those of you reading it are enjoying it. We hope you’ll let us know? Even better, leaving an Amazon or Smashwords review helps other readers to decide whether The House of the Stormwind is ‘worth buying’. To all of you who will go on to leave us a review, please know that we are grateful for every single one. 🙂

Now we are looking forward again, and doing our best to find a good balance between writing for this blog and our Creations newsletters, and getting back to writing stories (something we have both missed quite a lot!) After all, we have Mosaic of Light to finish, and more short stories clamouring to be told!

So thank you for all your support, thank you to everyone who’s already purchased The House of the Stormwind (and/or The Cordello Quest!), thank you to everyone who shared the launch event – or other posts – on Facebook, or tweeted or retweeted us during and after the launch.

We really do appreciate you!

Joanna & Ron 🙂

Official Launch Day for The House of the Stormwind

The House of the Stormwind and other short stories

Our new ebook

THE HOUSE OF THE STORMWIND

and other short stories

launches

TODAY!

All subscribers to our Creations Newsletters have been emailed today’s special Launch Edition which contains a generous discount code. (Our Creations Newsletters include free flash fiction stories written by us exclusively for our subscribers.)

If you’d like to subscribe, just sign up (it’s free) using the button at the top left of this page. Your subscriber discount code will be sent to you by automated email shortly after you confirm your subscription.

If you’d prefer not to subscribe to Creations, then you can purchase The House of the Stormwind at its full price of 77p/99c. It’s available on Amazon for Kindle, and on Smashwords for most other e-readers. [Find out more on our website.]

Please come along and join us at our Facebook Launch Event between 11am and 12 noon today (and maybe for a brief time later on.) We have a few surprises up our sleeves! It’d be great to see you there. 🙂

Thanks for being part of our Launch!
Joanna & Ron | The Lazuli Portals.