FREE BOOK FREE BOOK BUY FREE BOOK OBEY

My fifth book, The Knights of Derbyshire, is now free on Kindle until Thursday! So please buy it buy it buy it. Owning a Kindle is not required. In fact you can just download it and delete it for all I care (OK I do care a little bit) because it will raise my rank and more people will see it.

If you haven't sampled the series, this is the ideal way to do it. It's a lot of people's favorite book out of all ten, and there's a long introduction to catch you up with the events since Pride and Prejudice.

BUY IT NOW

Amazon actually made me go through a lot of hoops to get this up for free (which is why it isn't available on other eBook formats until February, sorry). Something about how giving away all their books is destroying their business model? That sounds about right. If you've ever been wondering how Amazon can sell all books at a loss, by the way, it's because they make their money in other things, primarily electronics. So undercutting the book market to achieve massive domination of publishing is a worthwhile effort for them. I'm not saying I support it (though as a massive book buyer who picks up tons of used history books from them, I financially support it) but I admire their business savvy. Also I can't get my sci-fi sold to a publisher because they're all broke and not buying anything. There's a connection here - I'm sure of it - but I'm too excited about this sale to bother discussing it here.

I confess Book 5 isn't my favorite book in the series. That distinction goes to Book 8, The Chrysanthemum and the Rose, followed by Book 10, The Last of the Wine, followed by this book. But in terms of being a fun, relatively quick read, it's probably the best. And a lot of fans think it's the best. Brandy Scott thinks it's the best and she's edited every single book.

Andre the Giant wants you to buy this book.

If pass up on this offer, please submit one of the following reasons for your lapse of judgment:
1. You were away and there was no internet except the hotel room connection and what the hell, that was like $20 an hour or something crazy like that, is that how they make all their money?
2. You already own Book 5 on Kindle because you paid for it (this is the correct answer).
3. This is your first visit to the internet ever and you don't understand it at all. Sorry about all the porn you're going to find in a few minutes by typing anything else into Google.
4. You're a visiting alien species and you've already determined that a free copy of the book will not help you conquer anything. (If so, how do you know for sure?)
5. You're that baby from the commercials with Jimmy Fallon who hates free stuff. Confusing baby.
6. English is not your first language. It's not even your second language. You're not having a successful time reading this sentence.
7. You're waiting for the anime.
8. BUY IT ALREADY

To conclude, I love you all. I'm not sure that's really true but I wanted to end on a less aggressive note. 

Georgiana and the Wolf Now Available!

Georgiana and the Wolf, the sixth book in the series, is now available.

Buy it in paperback.
Buy it for Kindle.
Buy it in all other eBook formats.
It should soon be available at Kobos and B&N.com if it is not already.

Description
A mystery unravels unravels in a rural town in France...

INSPECTOR ROBERT AUDLEY, rising star of the Parisian police force, is called to rural France and the estate of the Marquis de Maret to solve a murder. If his job wasn't hard enough with little evidence and few leads, suspicions point to a creature neither man nor wolf, but something in between.

As rumors of vigilantes and monsters fill the countryside, Audley investigates the connection between the Marquis and the local seminary, a finishing school for proper English women. The Marquis's betrothed, Lady Heather Littlefield, and her best friend and companion Georgiana Bingley seem somehow involved. Are they the next targets of the murderer? Or are much more mysterious forces at work?

In Altman's fifth installment of the The Darcys and the Bingleys, she continues Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice through the character of Georgiana Bingley, daughter of Charles and Jane Bingley of Chatton and Derbyshire, during her eventful and possibly disastrous year at the Robinson School for Women.

Enjoy! And please, please take the time to review it on Amazon if you have a chance.

Lookin' Pretty Sweet

This isn't the official publication post because Amazon and Smashwords still have to sort out what pages connect and where are the files and process the latest version of the cover, but Georgiana and the Wolf (book 6) is now published.

Paperback (may be temporarily unavailable due to cover alterations)
Kindle
All Other eBook Formats

Createspace, Amazon's POD publisher, is not so great with the cover trim, as the back tends to bleed into the spine. Their answer to this problem was, "Make a less complicated cover." And what, not let my readers have a sweet-ass bookshelf display?

Guess which ones had a different publishing company!

Three things you guys should look out for:

1. This blog will have an official publication post where I will be giving away a copy or two, maybe even one in paperback if I can manage it (it costs me money). So stay tuned to comment in that post and win! Because I don't get a lot of comments so you will probably be the winner.

2. I'm saying goodbye to Austen Authors, but I have one final post later this month and will be giving away eBook and paperback copies of the book, so if that's on your blog watch, check it out. I will also repost it in my Facebook Group so that's what you should be subscribed to, that group, because that's where the action's at anyway.

3. BOOK 5 (The Knights of Derbyshire) WILL BE FREE ON KINDLE FOR FIVE DAYS THIS MONTH. Those five days will probably be Dec 23-27th. Even if you don't own a Kindle (...yet) you're welcome to download a free copy and read it on your computer. Or just have it, because you can and it's free. Needless to say I will post when it's free the moment it becomes free, give or take a few hours of processing. Please, please take advantage of this. I had to unpublish from Smashwords and this whole mess just to get into the Kindle Select program for three months to do this for you guys.

4. There is no fourth thing on this list.

5. Happy Hannukah!

And to All, a Good Night

Thanksgiving is my mother's favorite holiday. I could actually take it or leave it, but it is nice in that it's not a Jewish holiday, as the Jewish holidays come with all kinds of ritual obligations and restrictions, and it's an American holiday that's secular enough for even religious Jews to take part it in. Some Jews don't celebrate Halloween, which just sucks for them, as Halloween is my favorite holiday. When I was very young I went to an Orthodox day school where everyone was more religious than me, and I was disappointed that there were no Halloween decorations like in public schools, so I had to take comfort at the skeleton over the letter"S" in our letter chart and consider it my own decoration. But even Orthodox schools, which didn't necessarily take off for Christmas (a lot of yeshivas take a week off in January), took off for Thanksgiving because the kids' parents would be off from work so it made sense. I grew up with a mix of secular and religious culture that I'm very proud of.

Thanksgiving is about watching the parade and eating turkey. Also it's about judging how bored Santa looks when he shows up at 11:58 in front of Macy's. The last couple years have been good but it can vary. He's been on that float I don't know, at least four hours, and it's often drizzling or snowing. And he can't look NOT jolly for any part of it, unlike the rest of the people on the floats. So think about that when you're watching the parade, WHICH YOU SHOULD BE.

Georgiana in the Wolf, in more pertinent news, should be out the second week of December, hopefully before that. Amazon's Createspace is sending a proof on Monday, which will no doubt have some problems, but if there aren't too many problems the second proof won't take long. I was shooting for December 1st but there's always unexpected delays, like your second copyeditor is out doing Hurricane Sandy relief and your graphic designer needs a new computer. Watch this place for giveaways. The Knights of Derbyshire made it into Kindle Select so it will be free for 5 days in December.

Happy Thanksgiving! 

First, let me just say I'm fine. I live in Upper Manhattan, so I never lost power during the Hurricane. My brother was without power for a week and the same with my parents in New Jersey, and everyone is safe and healthy and there was no major damage to the house. Things are still a little tense here in NYC, with a gas shortage and crowded subways, but we made out a lot better than other people who are now homeless.

If you're looking to donate, I heavily suggest check out the AidMatrix website and choose a local charity that will be more efficient with your money than the Red Cross. If you want my person suggestion in terms of work I've actually seen happening on the ground, a great place to check out is the UJA, which is currently providing non-denominational services to all boroughs.

Anyway... Big news! Book 6 - Georgiana and the Wolf - is back from the copy-editor's. I'm just doing some last-minute checks and waiting for the cover designer to get back to me with a final cover and then I begin the proof process at Createspace. In other words, the book is on schedule to be out in December, hopefully very early December.

When book 6 is released, look for discounts on Book 5 (The Knights of Derbyshire). It's the only other book in the series whose price I can control, and I'm going to bring down to .99c a lot to push sales. It may even be free for a few days.

Book 7 has gone to the editor's, where I expect to be for a while. We're shooting for a Spring release and then a Fall release in 2013 for Book 8. Book 7 doesn't have a title yet.

The best way to get all these updates is join my Facebook Group Page, which is the page I update most often.

In unrelated news, I did a podcast about some of my earlier writing, the Bucky O'Hare Web Series. You can listen to me rant about season 2, which I worked on from 1998-199, here.

I am Totally on Top of the Blog Thing

This is not going to be the cover of book 6
but wouldn't it be cool if it was?

I don't always have a long post prepared, so if you want to hear the latest about books 6 and 7 as events develop, please go to my Facebook Group Page. I seem to have the most fun with that, and there's more feedback options for you guys.

Latest Updates:

The Knights of Derbyshire (Book 5) - The second edition is out in all formats. If you buy it, you will get the second edition, which includes a preview chapter from book 6. If you already bought the first edition and want the second one, you can email me and I will send you the eBook edition. The formatting is also better in the paperback, with the pages looking neater and just generally more professional. Your cover may vary slightly in terms of the lining up of the pictures on the front and back on the spine, but Createspace says there's nothing they can do about that. Every printing is a little bit different because the technology isn't there, so just think of it as your own personal edition.

Georgiana and the Wolf (Book 6) - Hopefully it is going into copyediting soon. I could put it out much faster without all of these editors and copyeditors involved, but if you're going to be spending real money, I'm going to get you the best possible product I can manage. Publication date is sometime before the end of 2012. Over at the Facebook Group Page I'm posting possible covers and you're welcome to submit your own public domain wolf-related 19th-century images, and if I choose yours, your name will go in the acknowledgments.

Book 7 - As yet untitled, because the old title doesn't work for publication. Preliminary work has started on book 7, because we're shooting for a Spring 2013 release. Since Book 6 is kind of a strange book (it's a murder mystery set in France) and Book 7 is more in line with previous content, I'd like to get it out reasonably soon after the publication of book 6. Then there's going to have to be a break to breathe before Book 8, which is for the record my favorite book in the series.

In other news, Shana Tova (Happy New Year) to fellow Jews and fans of the Jewish lunar calendar, as Rosh Hashanah begins on the night of the 16th. 

Gone But Not Forgotten

Yup, THIS is where you learn about skin cancer

I'm going away for the next 2 weeks. My father has a dermatology conference on a Baltic cruise ship for some reason and I'm going with him. Which is good, because I really need to get out of the city and the heat.

I was going to do a podcast bringing everyone up-to-date, but I realized that it would just be complaining about a hot, awful summer. Don't get me wrong - sales have been great, and books 5 and 6 are coming along - but my family's gone from emergency to emergency and my iPod weather app always says "feels like 99 degrees" even when it's 80. So I just need to get out of here. No I will not be visiting any sites I mentioned in book 3 - I will be in Russia, but not that deep in Russia - but I would like to see some of mainland Europe, which I have never seen.

Book 5's revision will be out in August. It was delayed by everyone else having a crazy summer, too, and I did get back new edits but didn't have time to implement them because there's a waiting process when you go back and forth with Kindle and Createspace. Looking through the book, my friend only found about 20 typos, which I don't think is as bad as some people made it out to be, but could use improvement.

Book 6 is coming along, but I'm not setting a date on it yet. I''m not doing any work on it on the minute other than looking through common domain images for possible art and color themes. The manuscript itself is at the editor. It will be called Georgiana and the Wolf. There really is no way to work Darcy into the title, which is why I abandoned that publishing convention for The Knights of Derbyshire. The plan is, because book 6 is just so much different from the other books in the series, to just rush on ahead to book 7 which brings us back to more familiar territory (and resolves a major plotline of book 5) and then take a breather before book 8.

For those of you who have read book 7, which used to be known as If I Loved You Less, I am open to title suggestions, because that is an OK fanfic title (it's an Austen quote) but a bad book title.

I'm not putting book 5 on sale while I'm in Europe, but honestly if $4.99 is breaking the bank for you, just read the book online. There will be sales when I get back around my birthday (Aug 28) and a whole length of time before the release of book 6, which won't be out any earlier than November from the looks of it.

My books wil be sold at the Decatur Book Festival over Labor Day Weekend. I won't be there (family event) but there'll be signed copies of books 1 and the anthology to buy. Sooner or later I'm going to have to stop avoiding cons, but money's a little tight and it's a BIG family event. Also traveling on Shabbat is impossible and I'm kosher so that always makes these things a little more expensive and way more complicated.

I just want to say before I leave that I really appreciate every one of my fans. Hell, I appreciate you even if you bought the book, didn't like it,and posted a nasty review on Amazon. You do what you gotta do. But I definitely wouldn't have the courage (or patience) to self-publish the continuing series without all the support I've received, and I'm grateful for it.