News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #135…
Happy Holidays. Let me take the opportunity to wish you and yours a happy holiday season and a prosperous New Year. Make a few resolutions that are easy to keep: support and use your local public libraries, support your local bookstores, and read a lot of books. Reading is fast becoming a lost art. I appreciate that you and yours are readers and feel especially honored if you read my books.
Where do you buy books? First, many people use public libraries and buy few books. There are online lenders too (Smashwords—see below—has online library affiliates.) Do I have a problem with that? No! It just increases the number of readers and is a lot better than pirating my ebooks.
Second, while your big book-barns are hurting, mom & pops seem to be surviving, offering a personalized service that many readers enjoy. (My favorite bookstores are those old musty ones specializing in used books—I make cameo appearances as an owner of one of those in Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By and Rembrandt’s Angel.)
And then there are all the online retailers who have a huge and often overwhelming inventory. It’s a reader’s world.
Newsletter via email? You can sign up for that. Just send me an email via my contact page with the subject “Subscribe,” and I’ll add you to the list (I’ll never divulge your email to third parties). I won’t deny there will be duplicate information between this newsletter and the email one, but you’ll often get the news first via email. The email newsletter probably won’t contain as much industry news, though, so it will probably be more sporadic. Think about it. You can always unsubscribe.
Coming soon to Smashwords. Carrick Publishing and I’ll soon be adding Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder and Aristocrats and Assassins to Smashwords, continuing the program to add all my ebooks there. We’re emphasizing the popular “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” in the immediate future, but many of my sci-fi books were already there for your perusal.
So far we’ve added Soldiers of God and Angels Need Not Apply (complete with a spiffy new cover) to Smashwords, making these novels available there as well as on Amazon. That means readers preferring other ebook formats (those frequenting Apple, B&N, and Kobo retailers, for example) can choose the ebook format they prefer (Smashwords also sells the .mobi format for Kindles).
Carrick Publishing and I are still working on adding print versions for the books in the series other than The Midas Bomb. For readers who prefer print, please be patient.
More new books. Early in 2017, Carrick Publishing will release Gaia and the Goliaths, #7 in my detective series (The Midas Bomb was #1). This will occur slightly before Penmore Publishing releases Rembrandt’s Angel in the spring. I have a post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel waiting in the wings and am working on a new YA sci-fi mystery. The beat goes on.
There’s a pre-release excerpt from Gaia and the Goliaths at the end of Family Affairs. More pre-release info about Rembrandt’s Angel will appear on the publisher’s website, but see the blurb below for a teaser.
A new publisher. Surprised? In case you missed the news above, Penmore Press will publish my new novel Rembrandt’s Angel instead of Carrick Publishing. As a U.S. publisher (Carrick Publishing is Canadian), I hope they’ll have more of a following here in the U.S. and appeal more to U.S. bookstores. (Of course, my absence from bookstores is more my doing, not Carrick Publishing’s, because I’ve emphasized ebooks over print since I had several early POD fiascos). Other reasons for this branching out have been mentioned in my blog posts.
I will continue with Carrick Publishing, having developed many friendships there. I’m looking forward to doing the same with Penmore Press (that’s already begun). Like many authors, I’ll have more than one publisher. Both my publishers are interested in entertaining the reading public with new offerings—that’s what counts for me. As a small press, Penmore also feels like a home away from home, just like Carrick Publishing. That’s also important!
More about Rembrandt’s Angel. All my books have an international appeal, especially Rembrandt’s Angel. (Also see Aristocrats and Assassins below.) Mysteries, thrillers, and sci-fi (or their combinations) are genres that appeal to people everywhere who read English (or other languages for originals in that language or translations). This new book starts out being a crackdown on art thieves by Scotland Yard Inspector Esther Brookstone, but ends up with her and paramour Interpol Agent Bastiann van Coevorden nearly becoming victims to an international conspiracy. It will appear in spring 2017.
More freebies. I’ve written new PDFs free for the asking—see the list on the webpage “Free Stuff & Contests” at this website. For readers who want freebies, this is your chance! Why do I do this? First, I love storytelling and entertaining readers all over the world. Second, responding to an email request for one of these PDFs just represents a few mouse clicks (beyond the writing, of course). And third, I don’t have the time to find publishers for or the money to publish everything I write, but I don’t want to deprive readers of any entertainment.
Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder. This is the featured book from my catalog this week. #3 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” this mystery/suspense/thriller novel has more twists and turns than a carnival pretzel. Chen is accused of murder, so naturally Castilblanco tries to help her. But there is a lot more to the murder than meets the eye. Readers will have a great time unraveling it all with these NYPD homicide detectives and will be kept guessing right up to the climax. Soon available in all ebook formats.
In libris libertas!
