Honestly, when am I not running a contest?

Free stuff. That's what this blog is all about.

Contest: Think you've got a good public domain image for Book 6? Submit it via email, comment on this page, or on the Facebook Group Page. Last book, Cherri won this contest with her submission, which ended up being the cover image for Book 5, The Knights of Derbyshire. The winner gets their name in the acknowledgments and a free hard copy of the paperback, which is on schedule to be released late Fall.

Also, it is perpetually too hot outside. That is all.

In My Spare Time

Since I realize it might be a good idea to actually say something interesting on my blog, I'll take a moment to talk about the iPhone game I'm currently obsessed with, Cause of Death. It's a murder-solving game involving a male and female detective who don't like each other at first because they're prejudiced against people who act differently and they have a lot of pride. So it's basically exactly like playing Pride and Prejudice, if Pride and Prejudice was about catching serial killers in America and also not like Pride and Prejudice at all.

But I'm sure learning a lot about San Francisco!

1. San Francisco is like, loaded with serial killers. People are pretty numb to it at this point, because anywhere else in the world, eight serial killers a year chopping women’s faces off or drowning them in bathtubs filled with ice before chopping their faces off would be sort of alarm. Maybe that’s because…
2. The cops need about six hours to catch them, once they actually bring the important the important partners who are also romantic interests on the case, which should be about 4-6 girls in. This is probably because…
3. The lab can do anything instantaneously, be it compare DNA samples to a national database or hack things which are not even electronics and connected to a computer in the first place. They’re so good at it and valuable to the team that they can do whatever they want in their spare time, including clearing out the evidence in freezer storage to make room for this comic books, which is totally a smart thing to do. But the detectives do actually need to do some street work, interviewing suspects. Who, by the way …
4. Everyone runs. Everybody. Maybe it’s because they hunted prostitutes for sport and left their DNA everywhere, maybe it’s because they have a dime bag of weed in the fridge, maybe they just filed their tax returns a few days late, but either way, running from the murder police after they ask you three questions is definitely the thing to do. It’s important not only to duck out the backdoor, but to hurl knives, an assortment of kitchen items, and anything else that could possibly fatally harm police officers in their way, because G-d knows that doesn’t make it worse. Fortunately, the DA considers, “I ran from the cops after boobytrapping my kitchen mid-flight and firing six shots at them at close range before hijacking a car not because I was guilty, but because I got spooked” to be a valid excuse. Maybe it’s helpful that…
5. Whatever doesn’t kill you slows you down for a few minutes so your partner can go one-on-one with the bad guy. Getting your skull bashed into concrete, taking two armor-piercing bullets to the shoulder, falling off a roof – these are temporary concerns, so much that your detective will stand by the ambulance background after the chase and say, “Yeah, I’m just. Just a scratch.” He may be hemorrhaging blood internally, but all in a day’s work catching the guy who just turns out to be a low-level coke dealer. Or the mob. And speaking of the mob…
6. Mexican drug cartels hang out with serial killers. Just because, I guess. Or maybe there’s just so many that it’s bound to happen by accident. They hire a guy to patch them up in a dark warehouse after a shooting and he turns out to be a serial killer. A serial killer who trains serial killers says, “Can I crash on your couch for I don’t know, 6 months?” and of course the answer is, “Sure, person who would draw unnecessary attention to us.” Fortunate for the police, drug cartels are really easy to deal with  because…
7. Excessive use of force is not really a “thing” in San Francisco. This is quite helpful to the cops. Is a cartel bully standing in the way of you interviewing a possible serial killer? Shoot him in the head at point black range, then let your partner gun down his guards like it’s Prohibition and you’re Al Capone. Other options (especially if anyone tries to run, possibly from the gun-happy policemen) include: hijacking civilian cars and then crashing them, shooting innocent people in the back, hurling people off rooftops,  tossing bombs out the window without looking to see if anyone’s standing outside first, electrocuting suspects, and getting into a fatal gun fight with a security guard because you’re undercover. Because hey, you got the bad guy, and now he’s not going to kill any more women by suffocating them with plaster. It may have taken an additional four or five unnecessary deaths to do it, but job well done. Maybe the city lets this slide because they save so much money on criminals never going to trial because they never survive the final chase. Unless they do, then …
8. Court room scenes descend into hostage situations. Bailiffs are clearly trained to not use their guns, or properly restrain dangerous suspects, or look for guns or knives on the dangerous suspects known for smuggling guns and knives into places. Several body counts later, he gets off on a technicality. It just makes you mad enough to …
9. Always drop your gun. This is an important thing to do at the beginning of any fight scene. Whoever’s making police-issue weapons in California, they need to fire the guy in charge of lubing the handles, because I was never in a chase/fight scene where my gun didn’t instantaneously flee from my hand like I was covered in gun anthrax and the pharmacy was out of Cipro. Also, it’s never a good idea to go for it. Swinging a toaster around instead is a much better option. And I was done clubbing the suspect with a broken ballet, a picture frame, and then hurling him off a building, it was important to remember that…
10. No matter how pressing the issue, there is always time to not talk about your relationship with your partner. These meaningful lines of dialogue where one person tries to say something and the other person shoots them down or is interrupted by the temporary boyfriend/girlfriend before true and obvious feelings can be expressed are things to do during processing, in an ambulance, and while the captain is waiting to tell you where you can find the triple-murder suspect who’s holding people hostage. Love (however delayed, or not reciprocated) comes first, hordes of serial killers second!

Be in Book 5! Last chance!

Lots of news!
1. This is your last chance to get your name in the acknowledgments of the second edition of The Knights of Derbyshire! All you have to do is email me with more than four typos you found in the first edition and you will get your name inserted and a free eBook (any device) of the second edition. And please, please do this in the next five days. Contest closes on the 6th. Because I have to get the second edition out.

2. Sales! There will be sales this summer on the eBook as I experiment with pricing on Amazon. Maybe $2.99, maybe .99c, but keep your eyes peeled on the Facebook group page. And there will be a big period of sale before the release of book 6 in the Fall.

3. Book 6 will be titled Georgiana and the Wolf, which is its old FFnet title. It's currently at the editor's. Then it goes to the copyeditor's, then to layout, so some months are involved here, but I will try to get it out this Fall. It is the only book where I am doing a sort-of major revision to one of the plotlines in the books versus versions you will find online.

4. A couple questions people may have about book 5:
- Yes, it is self-published, which is why I can alter the contents of the book or change the price. I cannot do this with the first four books.
- I cannot bring the price of the paperback way down because it costs money to print and I cannot sell it at a loss.
- The eBook is distributed on non-Amazon sites by Smashwords, which takes several weeks to update, which is why I cannot fluctuate the price on other sites as I can on Amazon and Smashwords
- In case you were wondering, yes book 5 does weigh more than the other books because the paper quality required for digital printing is much higher and therefore heavier. I spoke to the rep at Createspace and she they cannot make the book lighter. It's not a brick or anything, but someone like me who mails people copies on occasion, those ounces make a difference.
- Yes, Mugin does appear in a later books, in which form I will not yet reveal.

5. Jesus, it is really hot outside. That is all.

New Contest!

There's more going on than I have time to discuss at the moment, but I need to announce that there's going to be a second edition of book 5, and here's how you can win a free e-book:

I know that there are typos that weren't found by multiple editors. So if you can send me an email with the page numbers (or line quoted so I can find the location) of more than 4 typos, you will get:
- your name in the acknowledgments of the second edition
- you will get an e-book in any format you want of that version.

Content is on until July1st, so get to reading!

Publication!

Book 5's available! Get your copy, hot off the presses (somewhat literally, because it's print-on-demand).

You can buy it directly from Createspace here.
You can buy the paperback on Amazon here.
You can buy it for Kindle here.
You can buy it for all other eBook formats here.

It behooves me to say that if you buy it on Createspace, a greater percentage of the money goes to me than if you buy it elsewhere, where Amazon takes more.

Back copy:

Twenty years have passed since Mr. Darcy married Elizabeth Bennet, and their family has grown. All of the Bennet sisters are married, and their children are on the threshold of adulthood and ready for entrance to proper society. War in Europe is over, and it seems that England, and our beloved families, are at peace.

But trouble lurks on the horizon. A popular revolt is brewing in Derbyshire, lead by a deluded radical. The very safety of Pemberley and Chatton House are threatened when a family member goes missing, and Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley, with the help of relatives and friends, must attempt a dangerous rescue while the wolves close in around them.

In Altman's fifth installment of "The Darcys and The Bingleys," she continues Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice not just through romance and foibles but political intrigue, action, and the occasional brutality required of life in Georgian England.    

Whither Book 6?

I'm a bit in the hole from editing and design costs, but as soon as I get out of that - get your copy of book 5 today! - I will start working on book 6, hoping for a fall release.

Rolling rolling rolling

Feels like this, right?

Hopefully, book 5 should be out next week. The print version is there, but lacking a cover. A couple people have responded to my cover design ad, but no one has actually delivered the cover yet or said officially they would do it. So, if you can design book covers, there's $50 in it for you. The eBook version is pretty much there, but it's hard to tell. I can't submit it for premium distribution on Smashwords until I publish it, and only when they review it for premium distribution do they find if things are problematic in the file formatting. And that takes a week. And I can't put up the Kindle version until the print version goes up. But rest assured, I am working on it.

Whither book 6? Well, that depends on sales of book 5. If I earn back my money on book 5 (I did shell out good money for copyediting), I'll try to do book 6 in the fall or winter 2012. If I'm in the hole, we'll see. It's kind of a tense time for me, because both of my bosses and my first publisher owe me money, but until they get it to me, my bank account is pretty low.

If you're looking for a review copy of book 5, the e-version will be pretty easy to get from me, but if you want a print copy for review, you need to be someone who will actually really super do the review. No offense to reviewers, but this time it's money out of my pocket to get you a the book, so if you want to do the print review, please be serious about doing it, and give me an email.

There is no textual differences between the books, except maybe in the acknowledgments if I forget to line up last-minute additions correctly. Also, I worked really hard on the formatting for book 5's print version, because you need to format print versions, so I'm really proud of it, but I know some people like their eReaders. Just so you know. 

Jane Austen with me in Kathmandu, Nepal

Boy, it sure has been awhile, hasn't it? So long that Blogger has significantly changed its layout for designing posts.

I have been back from India for the last month, and insanely busy for all of it. I arrived on top of Passover, then had to begin to catch up at my job and finish my Kickstarter project, which has had just hours and hours of audio to transcribe. And I've been working on book 5. I'm doing the last of the copyediting issues now and from then it's formatting, layout, then publication.

A couple things of note:

- The size of the book will be the size of The Ballad of Gregoire Darcy, as those proportions are easily available on Createspace, whereas the proportions that Sourcebooks used (shorter with wider pages) are not allowed for wide distribution

- All of the previous books have used a creme-colored paper to some extent; book 5 will be whiter. Again, this is a distribution requirement. I am making an effort to have the books look similar, but I also want to get it to the most people possible, because I know a lot of people are going to want the hard copy.

- The price for the hard copy will probably be around $14.95, or less on discount, and the price of the eBook will vary depending on sales and promotional periods, but stay between $2.99-$4.99 for the most part. I don't think I'd put it way above that. Please watch my group page and blog for announcements of specials. I may even reduce it to .99c a couple times for a day or something.

- Because this is a POD book, there will be a delay on shipping. I don't have any control over this. If you want to buy a copy directly from me because POD is not available in your area (non-US), you can contact me and I'll set that up.

- While I'm trying to keep the general layout from book 4, I won't have as much freedom for fancy flourishes that Sourcebooks did a lot of at the beginning of chapters and between scenes, but I'll do what I can for the hard copy. The eBook will pretty much just be text because it has to work on all formats. The Kindle version has more room to move.

- It's 80,000 words, so it'll be somewhere in the 300-350 land of page numbers. Again, this is only relevant if you're buying the hard copy. Book 5 is not as long as the previous books because it has a more concentrated plot. Book 6 is the shortest book by far, at least 67,000 words or something like that, and after they get longer and longer as I have more and more to do with the younger cast. The final book is something crazy, like 200,000 words. Man, I hope we get there.