Sabriya's Hope is Now "The Daughter They Stole"

Feedback from you, my followers, would be appreciated, since I really don't know what I'm doing, and whatever it is, it's not working.

After some advertising and promotion, Sabriya's Hope was not selling. As far as I could tell, it didn't sell a single unit, even though it was available on every major retail website and I did some modest advertising.

The problem could have been the landing page, the lack of in-depth marketing, or... in the end, Pam and I decided it was the title. "Sabriya's Hope" just did not sound like a thriller. 

Brainstorming with ChatGPT led to a title change, which meant reformatting the interior and cover, getting a new ISBN, and removing the old titles from retail sites.  Though I still have 10 copies of the original title (now available cheaply), I've shifted to more targeted, intentional marketing.

Below are some of the website banners and marketing changes. As of today, the new title (same manuscript) is available on Amazon, Kindle, Ingram, and many other places, including Nineveh's Crossing, where I'll sign copies if I get a chance.

A targeted campaign will launch this coming weekend on BookBub for the ebook, with keywords suggesting it may appeal to readers of Christian Fiction Thrillers (until recently I didn't know there was such a sub-genre). 

Below is the first social media post, which was a bit tall for IG, so I had to squat it.

And the targeted BookBub display ad that will run for a few days as a test.

Again, your suggestions are welcome.

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Perseverance Structure

Today I begin the manuscript for my 5th or 7th novel, depending on how Wizard Clip Haunting is counted (1 or 3). I was calling this next effort Edith's Hope, as the third in a series of novels about courageous women who battle profane cultures  (#1 Tiger's Hope, #2 Sabriya's Hope), but I may rename it after the story's prominent theme—Perseverance since I've abandoned the "Hope" trilogy idea. Sabriya's Hope has been reissued as The Daughter They Stole: A Sabriya Kensington Thriller. Yes, that suggests a series. Will Sabriya wear a mask, a cape, and brandish a sword? (She hasn't told me.)

As I detailed in my last post about the "Nigerian" scam I fell for, the scam had a beneficial upside. It motivated me to create thorough character profiles for the main characters, and I completed a detailed plot diagram consisting of a sequence of 8 Story Diamonds, one for each of the 8 parts of the story.  

Here's an image of that plot, which defines each of the 72 chapters (in green rectangles). Turning points at act breaks (3 acts per part) are in purple, pinch points in dark blue, and disasters, which act as cliffhangers at the end of each part, are in red.

What's Perseverance about?  

At the beginning of the 20th century, a strong but timid Ohio farm girl with nascent feminist tendencies rejects America’s women’s suffrage movement as too political, too slow, and too regressive. Instead, Edith Jane Flesher chooses an adventure to British India as a Christian missionary to care for poor Dalit women whose husbands have abandoned them. Little does she know her idealism will be severely tested as her husband and toddler son are suddenly taken from her, and then her life and those of her young daughters are threatened with death, adultery, corruption, trafficking, and the defamation of character by a cabal of men she first trusted, leaving her only with perseverance.

The Character Profile MS Word document describes (together) Edith's character and story in a short-handed treatment of 18 pages, followed by 12 pages that describe each of the other 16 major characters.  The characters are also described psychographically.

The Nicomachean chart illustrates the moral transformation arc of the characters. Some arc toward the central virtue, others arc toward the vice extremes, and a few remain anchored and do not transform. 

The Myers-Briggs chart illustrates the fundamental learning and interacting personalities of the characters.

Finally, all of the above serve only as beginning guides. They are all sure to change as the manuscript develops. 

THE LITERARY AGENT SCAM I FELL FOR

THE AGENT SCAM I FELL FOR AND THE 12 RED FLAGS I IGNORED.

I've written or edited 12 books, and I've begun the manuscript for novel number 5. So, now and then I'll get a complimentary email from a reader, which I appreciate. In the last year, such emails have usually been about Wizard Clip Haunting. 

If you're an author and published, even self-published, as most of my books are, there is usually one thing missing that you hope for—Literary Representation—an agent. 

My best-selling book (The Moral Premise) was picked up by a publisher without an agent. But the market niche was unique. Most best-selling books (like novels) require an established traditional publisher, which requires traditional literary representation — an agent.

Here's what happened to me, and understand that I am usually a pretty suspicious fellow, considering I see daily scam or phishing emails trying to get my information or invoicing me for something I never bought or wanted.

But we authors are all hopelessly and eternally hopeful for a traditional publisher, which I have, but not for my novels. 

At the bottom of this blog I link to Randy Ingermanson's Advanced Fiction Writing blog about how to recognize a scam. Randy has had a lot more experience with scammers than I have. The additional Red Flags he mentions about complimentary phrases in fraudulent emails WERE EXACTLY WHAT I WAS RECEIVING, phrases like:

"What caught my attention about ________" and 

"What I found especially interesting is ________." 

Such compliments hooked ... and I didn't realize they were the intro salvo of a long scam. Three such emails came in the months before the beat-by-beat slugfest below, supposedly from 3 different individuals ... but now I see they were part of the early softening scam.  

Now for the slugfest I experienced:

1. I received a complimentary email about Wizard Clip Haunting from British novelist "Rachel Hore," asking me a reasonable question about its origin. (I get these now and then.) It's not unusual that the email is from another writer, although after a little digging, I see that Rachel is well known in Britain. That is unusual. I'm flattered. (But it wasn't the real Rachel Hore, which I found out weeks later.)
2. I replied, and an exchange of 3-4 emails ensued, roping me in that someone well-known was engaging with me.
3. After a while, Rachel asks, "Do you have an agent?" 
4. "No."
5. "Why don't you contact mine in London? I'll recommend you. Here's "Sheila Crowley's" (private) email address." (RED FLAG #1 ... the email address is not a corporate email address but a Gmail address that is formatted to look official for the famous agency "Curtis Brown," whom I am familiar with, having been in their New York offices to buy the movie rights from and meet famous British novelist Rumer Godden.) But I suspect such people have private, non-corporate emails to get through their workday, since public-facing emails are likely to be harassed.
6. I pitch myself to fake "Sheila" with a short resume including my work in the movie industry as a story guru, and list the 4 novels I've written, which are not with traditional publishers, and the fifth I'm working on. 
7. After a few email exchanges, during which she congratulates me on my "large body of work," she offers me a Literary Representation Agreement. (RED FLAG #2 & #3 ... she's never asked for a sample of my writing, and so she wouldn't know if my "large body of work" was any good. But I rationalized, out of deep hope, that Rachel's recommendation is sufficient.)
8. The Agreement comes, and I read it carefully. Very normal. I sign and return it. (RED FLAG #4 ... The agreement looks normal, but it is not on official Curtis Brown letterhead. Hope rises eternal, and I disregard the obvious.) 
9. A clause in the Agreement says the agency will NOT ask for money to read manuscripts (correct), but the author would be responsible for third-party expenses if they become necessary. (IS THAT A RED FLAG? I didn't think so. It might be.)
10. Sheila responds, and an exchange takes place about the novel I'm currently writing, Edith's Hope. She asks for a manuscript, but I'm not there yet, so she asks for character profiles and a plot outline. I'm close to that, so I promise delivery in 10 days. (RED FLAG #5 - The real Sheila Crowley has a couple dozen client-authors (I had checked), and she wouldn't have time to repeatedly email and encourage me as much as she's doing, an unproven author, by her standards. I ask myself that several times but rationalize he may just be anxious for new writers.)
11. She then asks what else I have that might be ready to review. I pitch Sabriya's Hope as my best commercially viable novel, which was just released (albeit self-released), but with no advertising and no sales yet. 
12. She asks for the MSS. I send it.
13. She asks if I'm open to working with one of their Positioning Experts to ascertain whether the audience for Sabriya's Hope is correct and viable. (RED FLAG #6 & #7 - a good agent would be able to scan a manuscript and determine this, but there hasn't been the time for her to scan, let alone read, the manuscript, which should have been put on a pile and taken a month to get to, not 1-2 days.) (RED FLAG #8 - there is an implication that "working with" an outside person will require money on my part.)  THIS was the point where I suspected I was being scammed, but hope is eternal, and my doubts were quickly overcome. The main reason for this latest concern is that, just two months prior, I turned down an American-based "Positioning and Visibility" so-called expert who was trying to get me to pay $1,500 to $7,000 to improve the sales of Wizard Clip Haunting. But I had been through the wringer with WCH, spending over $10,000 on marketing with little return, and I knew adjusting Amazon keyword positioning would never bring in enough royalties to cover that expense. Also this "expert" was wrong about who I should be marketing WCH to. I had been positioning it to the audience she claimed would champion the novel, and that wasn't close to being true.
14. "Sheila's" positioning expert (supposedly a UK guy from the Netherlands) came off as very professional, as did the AI-generated proposal. That it was likely AI didn't bother me. It was correct and addressed my needs. (RED FLAG #9 - the proposal was just as polished as the American-based "expert" about WCH. They weren't the same, but now I wonder if they weren't one and the same person, except the first "Positioning Expert" wasn't connected with or recommended by an "agent.") 
15. Long story short, after correcting some content issues with his proposal, I paid "Thomas Williams" hundreds of dollars and gave "him" access to my Amazon Seller, KDP Bookshelf, and Goodreads accounts. Four days later, in return, I received a detailed, accurate, and informative report. This eased my doubts. The person knew a good amount about how Amazon, KDP, and Goodreads operated, and the report appeared to be manually but professionally created and not AI-generated. (RED FLAG #10 - the report didn't tell me anything I didn't already know about the audience, although it reinforced with data (fake?) that I had written a novel spread across several genres and thus diluted any marketing campaign's ability to connect with a solid audience.) But I knew all that, and I figured a good agent could have scanned the manuscript and figured the same thing out without doing an expensive market analysis. Common sense isn't expensive; it's just not common, so I rationalized that "Sheila" was just lazy, or offloading her workload. Crooks are indeed lazy.
16. I informed "Sheila" that I was almost done with the Character Profiles and Plot Outline and would be sending it within 8 hours.
17. Sheila was now anxious for me to continue with Phase 2 & 3 where the hundreds of dollars for Phase 1 was going to be thousands ... which BTW was still only 1/2 of what the American "expert" was asking ... a consolation I thought." This ask was the BIG RED FLAG #11. There was no need, and I pushed back several times and finally explained that the expense would never be recouped. I decided there would be no more money and began to investigate more deeply who I was communicating with. THIS WAS THE MOMENT THE ANGST, WHICH I HAD FELT FOR WEEKS, DISAPPEARED. I WAS FINALLY AT PEACE. I had finally convinced myself (and it was true) that I was being scammed. My internal feeling was physical evidence of the truth. Peace is a palatable metric of truth, it had been all along RED FLAT #12.
18. I finished the Character Profile and Plot Outline for Edith's Hope, and felt good about their integrity. But I decided not to send the two PDF files to the Gmail address I had been using for Sheila. Instead, I sent them to Sheila's real email address listed on the Curtis Brown website. I immediately got back a reply to send urgent emails to her assistant, which I did, all the time thinking I would get a reply saying, "Sheila Crowley did NOT request these; who are you?" 
19. Meanwhile, the fake "Sheila" wrote and asked where the files were. I replied simply, "I sent them to your other email address." "Sheila" wrote back saying her other email inbox was full and to please use her personal email to stay connected.  HA! I was getting somewhere now. I wrote back, "Check with ______" (Sheila's real assistant's name.) 
20. "Sheila" has not emailed me since.
21. I wrote the real Rachel Hore at her public-facing web contact form, and 12 hours later received an email apologizing for what I had been through, but she had never reached out to me about WCH, and we had never connected.  (SCAM CONFIRMED.)
22. I also had written to Sheila's REAL assistant and asked point blank if Sheila had ever communicated with me, and copied the email I had written to Rachel. I immediately received back a personal email from the assistant that Sheila had indeed never contacted me and would never have used the Gmail address I had referenced. (SCAM DOUBLY CONFIRMED)

I want to thank Randy Ingermanson of Advanced Fiction Writing for immediately telling me I was being scammed and to dig deeper. Randy was right from the get-go. 

The upside is that I completed a very good Character Profile document and Plot Outline, which has allowed me to begin the manuscript for Edith's Hope...a 30-year historical research effort that will now find its completion in a novel sometime next year.

There's another upside to this escapade. I've inadvertently met two British authors who did not intend to meet me (via email).  Rachel Hore is mentioned above. But I just discovered that back in July I received a complimentary email from another British author, now living in Vancouver. That communication didn't lead to any financial liability, but I ended up reading one of her famous books and liked it very much. Turns out we had NOT communicated until today (3 months later), when she denied ever writing me or knowing me. She confided that once "Stephen King" wrote her out of the blue to say he liked her writing. She didn't know Stephen was into romance. (LOL!) But she's been following this scam industry for some time. She says it seems to be coming out of Nigeria. I can nonetheless recommend Carol Mason's book "After You Left," ... read it ... liked it a lot. Yes, it's a sunny day here in southern Michigan.  Now, can anyone recommend which Rachel Hore book I should read? Anyone? Anyone at all? 

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Here is the link to Randy Ingermanson's Advance Fiction Writing blog about scams. Very valuable; if I had known what he writes about here, I would have avoided all the above problems.

https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/blog/2026/10/07/stop-and-smell-the-scammers/