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.

Contest!

I'm shooting for a May release for book 5, though that projection may turn into June, so it's a very soft "May." The book is at the copyeditor's (it take a long time to go through line-by-line) but in the meantime I need some help.

I'm looking for cover art - public domain art I can either obtain or buy from an art stocking site. It should be a wilderness scene, or a country scene, preferably involving the hunt or some other action-related event, because there is a lot of action in Derbyshire in this story. It has to be a painting, not a landscape photo, in keeping with the theme of the other covers.

The Knights of Derbyshire takes place in 1822-1823, so the art should either be from that general time period (1800-1830) or be art of that time period, because fashion changed a lot and it will be noticeable to get it wrong.

If I choose the art you found, you'll get a credit in the book and a free copy of the book.

In other news, I'm going to India on Sunday the 26th - next week - so I won't be updating this blog a whole lot until April, when I'm back in the States. If there's some major news to report I will put it up, but otherwise, follow my adventures here. Wish me luck!

Rants I Shouldn't Go On

I read a lot of magazines. I have monthlies, but I also have three weeklies - Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, and the New Yorker - to give me something new to read every Shabbos or just while I'm eating dinner on weekdays. And it makes me pretty damn angry to find that two of out of three of them have advertised or endorsed P.D. James's Death Comes to Pemberley. The New Yorker had a full-page back cover add (which probably cost at least $50,000, knowing what I know about magazines) and Entertainment Weekly included it in its weekly list of ten things I should care about, which is also advertising. Which is fucking insulting to me.

Let's not bother to discuss the merits of Death Comes to Pemberley because it doesn't really matter. Reviews have been bad-to-mixed, but it's certainly no The Education of Miss Mary Bennet so I have to give him points for just not being that, the worst of the worst when it comes to famous authors cashing in on the craze or just people doing bad writing. I haven't actually read DCTP because even if I had a free copy, I don't have time before India to do much of anything that doesn't involve the trip itself. The real point is, for this much promotion, I want DCTP to be a fucking classic. I want it to justify its existence and the amount of money Knopf has put into promoting it by being better than Pride and Prejudice.

I shouldn't be so down on James. After all, she's a cute little old lady who has worked hard all her life at writing and if she was ever going to make money from it, it definitely has to be now because she's going to keel over in a few years. It's not really that I hate her. It's that I want to be her. I don't want to tear a corrupt system down. I want in on it.

Let's face it: I'm no Shakespeare. I have a certain level of competency at what I do which is pretty established in this genre, and I have enough people liking me to justify its continued publication. But I wrote ten G-ddamn books in 5 years while also attending grad school, and have spent even longer promoting them, mostly by myself or with very little publisher money. I did all of the blogging and the social networking and got my Jane Austen creds by going to England and I still pay JASNA $30 every year or whatever it is for them to invite me to events that I can't attend because they're on Shabbos. I give away digital copies of the early drafts for free. I joined author social networks and I read all the Jane Austen blogs. The point is, I've paid my fucking dues, stretching my budget to spend my hours doing publicity until the next royalty check comes, and I'm going to continue to do all of this and I would appreciate I don't know, ANY of what she had handed on her to her on a silver platter. In fact, I think I would be happy with jut the platter.

Any other Austen author who says she doesn't feel this way is lying to you.

Writing About Writing: The Worst Kind of Writing

NOTE: The Kindle sale on my first book, which is currently $1.79, ends on January 15th.

Took a long walk today. Only 20 blocks or so, but I realized I haven't been outside a whole lot since starting my novel (now standing at 17,000 words) last week. Mostly for food. Entirely for food, actually. When I'm writing a novel it takes up most of my head space, so if I'm doing it right, if I'm not writing I'm thinking about what I'm going to write or how much I need to research before I can continue and how screwed I am, but my head is basically in the book. Not at all times, but at most times. I'm living in the book.

Advice for writers:

(1) Don't worry too much about distractions. I mean, clear off your schedule and all, but distractions are just going to happen. Let them enter your mind and leave.

(2) Don't stop for the day when you run out of ideas. Stop a bit before that, when you still have a sense of the next scene, so that you won't be a blank slate the next day. You always want to start off running.

(3) You'll be surprised how much shit you get done (paying bills, cleaning your room, writing blog posts) when you're procrastinating.

Back to work.

Actual Writing

Book 5 is at the copyeditor's.

I'm writing a new book, not related to my P&P stuff. So I am away. Writing. Be back soon. Maybe a month.