Reading Order

Here's the publication order of the six books of the Spymaster Fictive Universe. It's a perfectly fine order to read them in, IMO. 

I mean, that's the order in which I learned about the characters.

 

So. Publication order is:
 

Spymaster’s Lady  

My Lord and Spymaster
Forbidden Rose
Black Hawk
Rogue Spy
Beauty Like the Night 

 

The chronological order of events is:

Forbidden Rose  (1794)
Spymaster’s Lady (1802)
Rogue Spy (1802)
My Lord and Spymaster (1811)
Black Hawk (It covers several time periods between 1794 and 1818)
Beauty Like the Night (1819)

 And that's also a good order to read them in. So you win either way.

And there are some minor works in the Spymaster's Fictive Universe:

Gideon and the Den of Thieves (novella) (1793)
Not currently available.

Intrigue and Mistletoe in the anthology Mischief and Mistletoe (1815 and a bit)

My True Love Hath My Heart in the anthology The Last Chance Christmas Christmas Ball.

Her Ladyship's Companion (30-year-old Regency) (1818)

Technical Topics -- Breaking Comma Rules for Fun and Profit

... or, like, not

 
Punctuation Rule Breakage
Pro or con?

Elsewhere somebody talked about leaving out commas when he didn't like them. This is a response I made.
I'm assuming this is breaking hard rules, not just using the great expanse of stylistic wriggle-room Chicago Manual of Style and its brothers leave us.


I came up with five consideration to think about when playing fast and loose with commas. This holds true with a lot of writerly eccentricities besides comma punctuation, I suppose.


First off,
Let's say you leave out commas that do not, for some reason, please you on a case-by-case basis.

The publisher's copyeditor will have to laboriously add or remove those off-brand commas.
She really has no idea which comma-errors are done on purpose and which are true mistakes. She has to mark them all.
While she's doing all that comma work, she's not fine-combing your manuscript for other problems.
She's only got a set number of hours, most likely .
What do you want her to work on?

Managing Editore: Been a hard week

When you're confronted with her copyedits, you now have many hundreds of editorial marks and comments that you have to go through and leave in place or stet.

Then the Managing Editor picks up this complicated mess and says "I got an author here who doesn't know basic punctuation" or worse, "He's doing this on purpose?"
The Managing Editor's job is to look at every stet and say 'yes' to some and 'no' to some. You've given him work. Much work.
You have just pissed off the Managing Editor.
This is not a good thing
for anybody.


There will be some important stets you want to make. It's easier to argue for that one important stet if you have not just been stroppy over 800 missing-comma stets.

Sometimes we don't want to innovate

Whatever the outcome, the copyeditor, the Managing Editor, and you have wasted a lot of time and effort.

 

Finally --

While most readers won't notice commas one way or the other . . .

the ones who do notice intermittent use of the Oxford comma or failure to set off essential relative clauses with commas
will not only be distracted from the flow of your fiction,
they will see these as mistakes arising from the author's ignorance
rather than considered authorial choice
and in their heart of hearts, they will think less of you.

Win a FREE COPY of the Forbidden Rose audiobook

Dear All --

This is a wonderful opportunity to get a Free Copy of the most excellent Forbidden Rose audiobook.

The contest is over on Goodreads and will be open till tomorrow.  Pop over here and give it a go.  
Hurry.

Two ... no, three things to mention.  No, four.  Well, several things.

This is US only, and I am very sorry if the audiobook is not available where you live.  I feel just terrible about this.  All I can suggest is, check Book Depository for one possibility.  Ask at a local bookstore that may be able to order it.  Ask a US friend to buy it and mail it to you.
Geo restrictions frustrate me terribly.

The audiobook is about brand spanking new, so you are in the forefront of this reading delight.

Tantor is also going to put out Lord and Spymaster and Black Hawk over the next couple months.  I haven't heard these yet.  I am waiting impatiently.  Can I say I am on Tantor-hooks?

The Forbidden Rose audiobook and the others are narrated by the extraordinarily talented Kirsten Potter. (Who narrated Spymaster's Lady and did such a wonderful job.)  She is so good she should have groupies.

Teresa Medeiros has given me a cover quote on the audiobook.  Like, wow.

If you are at GoodReads anyway, wondering if you're going to enter this contest, remember you can check out the reviews of the book itself right at that site to decide whether it's worth the trouble. 

Jo (having done this huge gollop of prom, fans self in exhaustion.)

But, really.  I mean.  Free audiobook. How can you go wrong?

Technical Topic -- Do I need an agent?

Because advice is kinda like this

Giving advice here:

First, you finish the book.

I. If you're going for print publication with one of the Big Five New York Publishers you probably need an agent, because these publishers mostly don't look at unagented manuscripts.

Who are the Big Five? If you go to a book-and-mortar bookstore or the book aisle in the grocery and run your finger down a row of books, 90% of them are from the Big Five. Most of the folks who make good money writing publish with one of these imprints. We're talking Hatchette, McMillian, Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster and all the subsidiaries thereof.

So that is one career path. If you take it, you need an agent.

Your agent at work

A good agent will not only get your foot in the door, she will (a) know the best place to sell your work, which makes the sale more likely, (b) get the best contract terms, and (c) keep the author from making contract mistakes.

There are exceptions to the rule that you need an agent to get in this particular door. Some folk meet an editor at a conference; they're already published; they have a following for their fanfic; they are successfully self-published; they know somebody who knows somebody ...


II. Some imprints from the Big Five (Tor, Avon,) and some large independent publishers (HQN, Baen, Kensington, Ellora's Cave, Sourcebooks, Grand Central, Carina) accept unagented manuscripts.

These books are distributed to brick-and-mortar stores and groceries. Writers can do very well indeed dealing with this set of publishers. A number of the folks making a living at writing sell to these companies.

Your agent helps them pick YOUR ms

If you plan to deal with them, you do not need an agent to get your work seen. But a good agent might still perform functions (a), (b), and (c) above.


III. E-publishers and almost all small presses accept unagented submissions.

Agents do not generally submit to these publishers because there's not enough advance money in it.

Many satisfying options don't need an agent

IV. Self publishing/indie publishing, of course, doesn't need an agent.




So, the short answer is --

Summarizing all this

-- You need an agent for some career paths and not for others.
-- There are many profitable career paths that don't require an agent.
-- Even where an agent is required, you may be able to sneak by without one, depending.
-- Agents earn their weight in gold at contract time.
-- If you plan to submit to the Big Five, get an agent before you start firing your ms out to random publishers.
-- Finish the book.

Take Down Letters

Somebody brought up DCMA letters and their intention to charge in, sword swinging,

and take down the enemy. 

I have thought about this a good bit and will now for no particular reason share my conclusions with you.

I am not fond of folks who swipe the hard work of writer and  editor.  It sticks in my craw, to use the technical term.

But if you send this site a take down notice ... and send them another take down notice six weeks later when they have reposted the illegal download ... and then send them another ... and another ...
It is all very iterative.

And, I gotta say, there are lots of sites out there ...

How much time and effort will you spend? 
How many actual $$ sales have you thereby gained?
Is this the most efficient use of your time?
Is worrying about this the most efficient use of your energy?

If you google "joanna bourne" and  "free download" you'd get about 2000 hits.

Most folk who go for these illegal downloads never actually read the books.
Most of them never would buy the book if you put sugar candy on the cover.

Some folk who illegally download you go pick up a legal book later
or recommend you to friends who are more conscientious
or suggest you to their library. 

Some folk who illegally download you give you good reviews.  (I hope.  I mean, to first steal your book and then give you a bad review seems a bit much.)

Some folk who illegally download you can't get hold of a legal copy in their own country and to them I say, "Have at."

Go into the tavern and play your songs and if somebody throws money into the hat, bless them.  If somebody listens and enjoys and walks away without contributing, that is the burden on their own back.  Don't let it be one on yours.

Technical Topic -- A Girl and her Blog

Today, I am blogging

Cat available in some other posting

on blogging
which is somewhat iterative,
like the Worm  Ouroboros.

This is a primer on blogging for the writer who doesn't know much about blogging.  If you do, you can just skip to another posting that will probably have cats in it.

(The title is a riff on Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog, except that none of this is bloodthirsty or post apocalyptic and that is all to the good, says I.)

So.  What is A blog?
(I said we were starting from scratch.) 

Blog  is short for weblog. 

"the term weblog to G. Raikundalia & M. Rees, two lecturers from Bond University on the Gold Coast. The term was first used in a paper titled "Exploiting the World-Wide Web for Electronic Meeting Document Analysis and Management."  Popular use of the term Weblog as we know it today is from Jorn Barger of the Weblog Robot Wisdom (robotwisdom.com) in December 1997. Barger coined the term weblog meaning logging the Web. In 1999 programmer Peter Merholz shortened the term weblog to blog. " Webopedia


Every writer, the marketing mavens tell us, should have a website or blog or maybe even both to keep in touch with the world at large and to publicize since you cannot just shout out the nearest window and expect to be heard.


How to blog:  Lesson the First.

Let's begin with your Kindly Host:

To blog you need a host.  That is, you need a company that puts your blog on the web and saves all the old blogs in an archive where folks can get them and does the magic that translates your desires into pictures and words.  They do all the technical hard stuff so you, the writer, can not worry about it but just go write.

I use Blogger, which is one of several choices.

Look around.  This is Blogger.  The first word in the URL address uptop is 'Blogger', which is one of those subtle clues we writer folks pick up on.  Blogger is owned by Google.  They charge nothing for shaping the electrons into a blog and I have no idea how they make their money which is something I should worry about shouldn't I? 
Blogger is one of the three or four big blog-hosting companies.  Wordpress is another.  Livejournal is both a blog home and a community.

A blog on Blogger doesn't have to look like mine -- all cerebral and peaceful and blue with birds on it.  There are many 'looks'.   At the strip on the top you'll see a button that says "next blog".  Punching that will let you see a few more blogs before it runs into a dead end.  Then you can go back to my blog and do it again.

When you sign up for Blogger they'll walk you through the process of picking a template and choosing the fonts you want.  You have many choices.  You can be artistic.  You should probably expect six or ten hours getting familiar with the system and making all those choices as to how your blog is presented.


Hark -- Who Goes There?

Blogger can tell you how many people look at which of your blog postings.

This is on your Stats Page in Blogger.  How many 'hits' did you get on a particular day or for a particular post? -- Blogger can tell you.  What page did they visit just before they came to your post?  Did they google to come to your blog, and what did they google?  Were they on another site that links to one of your posts?

This stats page  is where you find out what draws the audience to your blog?   What are you, in fact, doing right?

For instance,  even though this is a writing blog, I talk about all kinds of things.  When I look at my Blogger analytics, I got folks looking at the posts on historical knitting and historical aprons.  The posts on historical underclothing are always popular.  And I have a post on where to find public domain pictures that folks consult a lot.

I mean, who knew there were apron fanciers out there?

Now, a writer creates her blog to attract folks who will buy the books.  If they've already bought the books -- and indeed that is why they are at the blog -- you want to encourage them to buy the next one or to recommend the books to their local library or their friends or both.

What should the blog creator write about?

Because you're a writer and an avid reader, maybe you want to suggest good books that you've found.  Maybe one of your blog features will be book lists or reviews.

Or there's research.  Maybe, if you do some interesting research for one of the books, you want to share that research with the readers.
Maybe you want to blog something related to the books.  Don't be shy writing about the Southern wildflowers your heroine is picking or the history of mountain cabins like the one she runs into the escape the storm. 
Folks really are interested in the nuts and bolts of the fictional world you create.


Search Engine Optimization:

SEO is a good thing, like flossing your teeth. 
Read here and here and you will know more than I do.

How Much Work Is a Blog?

Rule of thumb here ... Your blog should have new material added at least twice a week.  This doesn't have to be an 800-essay on Transylvanian wildlife.  It can be 250 words and some pictures.

Blogs love pictures.

But you do need new material.  You will not attract and hold followers if you have a 'dead' blog.
You saw those abandoned blogs as you scrolled through hitting the 'Next Blog' button a while back.   Blog after blog started and given up on.  The overwhelming majority of them have not been added to for a year.  So sad .... those are blogs that lost all the love and work put into them and went defunct.

That's why it's important to write about stuff that interests you.  So you won't get bored.       

You know about this need for new content because you just read the SEO info above.  Fresh blog stuff is harvested more actively by the 'bots.  So do short posting each time, but get the words up there.

Expect to spend an hour or two per week on a healthy, active blog.  If you are a successful writer and promote yourself a lot on the blog, rather than on a website, be prepared to spend more than that.

Smiley lion knows why you're doing a blog

Remind Me Again -- Why Am I Doing This?

Why am I doing this? is a question of general applicability and one I return to again and again.

Before you commit yourself to the time and work involved in opening a blog, ask yourself what you want out of it.

Do you like to write about wine making or the Kyber Rifles or your turtle breeding operation?   If so, your satisfaction will come from just writing.  Book sales are secondary.  Write about horses or mushroom collecting and mention your books from time to time and enjoy yourself,

Are you thinking of the blog primarily as a vehicle to promote your writing when you publish or self-publish?  Then try to pick a theme related to your books.  You write Historical Mystery -- write about famous unsolved crimes.  Write about the history of forensics.  Write about the Bow Street Runners.  Pull in an audience interested in the time and place and theme of your writing and you will attract people who will then go out and buy your fiction.

Post excerpts, talk about your ongoing writing, include outtakes ... everything you can imagine that will enrich the reader's experience of your books. 


When do I start my blog?   I'm not published yet.

It's a good idea to have your blog or website in place and active before you publish, because after you publish you will not have any time.  You should get your blog or website  up and running about the
time you're submitting your queries for the first book.

And yes, you really do need one or the other.
The readers have to know where to go to buy you, and then, where to go buy all your backlist.
Provide covers.  Provide links.

Reviewers need to know if you will give them free copies of your book to review.  Fellow bloggers need to be able to invite you to blog on their site.   Foreign publishers need to know how to get in touch with you so they can ask to buy your Italian rights.  


You keep saying 'blog or website'.  Do I need both?

The publicist at your publisher will say you need both.
And if you are self-publishing, I'd say you need both
But you can start with just one.  And you can pick.
There are advantages on both sides.

A website is more difficult and more expensive to set up.  It requires money to keep it in place and non-negligible expertise to modify it.  But a website requires very little feeding and maintenance once it's up. 

A blog is free, easy to modify, and gives you the chance to interact with readers.  It does the necessary.  It takes more work on your part.  

Will a Blog Give Me a Platform?

Well, geeze, I dunnoh. 

Okay.  Platform is good.  If you have a 'platform' you're more likely to sell that first manuscript.  More likely to get lots of money for it.  More likely to be offered glamorous speaking engagements.  More likely to hit the best seller list when the book does come out.

If you can blog with splendor and excellence and attract many followers, you may find yourself building a platform.
But then, if you can blog that well, your books are probably dynamite and you should be working on them.

Me, Talking About Entering The RITA Contest

Elsewhere, somebody asked --
(I'm paraphrasing here):

"Why enter the RITA?  Readers don't care about the RITA.  It's nice to get approbation from your fellow romance-authors, but it's an expensive luxury. 

Does the RITA have any real impact on sales or on any aspect of a career?"

So I had some thoughts on this,
to wit:

Reader, not caring about the RITA

It is true that readers don't know or care about the RITA.  It's not like getting a HUGO or an Edgar, worse luck.  I don't know why the RITA gets so little respect.

Hey -- Look at some of the authors who've won the Historical Romance RITA in the last decade or so.  (Click on the name to see a book.)

Sarah MacLean, Sherry Thomas, Pam Rosenthal, Madeline Hunter, Julia Quinn, Liz Carlyle, Laura Kinsale, Connie Brockway, Jo Beverley, Laura Lee Guhrke, Pamela Morsi, Julie Garwood, LaVyrle Spencer, Mary Jo Putney ...

Can we say, "Really Good Writers, Folks"?
Can we say, "You should read these people"?

Why is the RITA not making a bigger noise?
I have no explanation. I am confounded and numbleswoggled.

Anyhow, talking about money.

There's a definite bump in sales with a RITA win -- but that bump would not cover the cost of entry for many people.  When I look at the economics of the RITA, I'm looking at the long tail. Any monetary value, IMO, lies in a secondary effect on the professionals in the field, rather than in immediate, direct sales.

This is how I see the long tail:

-- You're right about the RITAs being primarily for other writers. But this is not a bad thing.  Many Romance writers try out the RITA Finalists in the year after the win and sometimes they like what they read. The single best advertising for any writer is the recommendation of other writers.

Somewhat jaded reviewer

-- RWA Chapters and writing organizations notice the winners. If you like speaking engagements, this is a way to get wonderful invitations.

-- Reviewers often pick up the next books from RITA writers. Reviewers love good writing -- that's why they're in the business -- and take an interest in what Romance writers think is good writing.

-- And I think the publishers take note.
Publishers are endlessly interested in writers. We are 'the product' they're selling, as it were. I like to think that in some future marketing meeting, that RITA win or Final might be the little nudge that pushes a book into a more favorable printing slot or gives it a bit of the publicity budget.

So. Onward to expenses.  Does the RITA cost a writer too much?

This so much depends. Take an example of one sort of writer.
Let's say you're not an RWA member and would not normally become one; you wouldn't go to National; you have to pay for your own print books; you have to pay for your own entry to the RITA contest; and you make less than $2000 writing income after expenses.

In this case, to get the RITA at the National Convention, you'd be paying, soup to nuts:

$120 RWA membership
$100 to print up ten copies of your book
$50 to enter the RITA contest
$500 registration for National Conference
$400 plane fare to National Conference
$50 for a checked bag
$500 hotel at National Conference
$130 meals at National Conference
$100 dress to wear to the Awards dinner
$100 for professional clothing to wear at the conference

This is all ballpark, but we're flirting with $2000 overall. And you'd have to judge five books.

Another writer would be in a different situation.
For instance, until I fell into my recent snit with RWA over their latest revamping of the RITA, I paid for RWA membership every year. I judged the RITAs whether I entered or not. I attended the National Conference whenever I could scrape together money enough to do so.

The National Convention of RWA

Because I was already paying for so much, entering for the RITA cost me about nothing extra. Entering the RITA, then, is probably a good economic decision for any RWA member who plans to go to National. It's maybe not such a good economic decision for folks who aren't and don't.


But the economics are not the be-all and end-all of this contest.  For me, entering the RITA has never been about the economics. It's part of being in RWA and supporting Romance.  For many longterm RWA members, the RITA is 'our contest'. It seems natural to enter.

Finally, let me suggest one particular case when the payoff is worth the cost.

If you are Indie pubbed and you have just a hellaciously good book and you cannot seem to get anybody to notice it ... the RITA might be a good way to put your book in front of the world.

Hellaciously good Indie book

Is your book good enough to Final? Looking at it objectively, is your book better than most of those Finalists?   Do you have a supergreatwonderful book?
If so, and if you choose not to go to National with your Final, the RITA would cost:

$120 RWA membership
$100 to print up ten copies of your book
$50 to enter the RITA contest

That $270 seems cheap for that amount of publicity. 
There'd be special notice taken when an Indie book hit a Finalist position.

Technical Topic -- What to do when you've done what you do

Congratulations on finishing your manuscript.
Woot woot.
Go celebrate.

We'll wait.




...  All through with dancing and whooping it up?
Now there are a few necessary steps to take to get from here to publication.

 I. Get Crits

What:  Turn some chapters of your manuscript over to harsh, knowledgeable critters.  Listen to what they say.  You need critters who haven't been with you every step of the way as you wrote.  Critters who are not your family or friends.

This is not putting a saucer of milk out for the tabby.  This is wrapping yourself in raw meat and stepping into the lion's cage.

How:  There's a Writer's Workshop in the Books and Writer's Forum.   Here.  Absolute Write, here has a 'Share Your Work' section.  Writer's Forum here has a Writers' Workshop.
If you are writing genre, there are probably specialized sites for writers of your genre.

Why:  Intelligent criticism of your work will help you write better and will prepare you to edit your manuscript.

II.  Let the manuscript rest

What:  Put the work away for as long as you can.  Six weeks.  Three months.  Six months.
(You spend this time working on the next ms and critting other folks' manuscripts, which is an excellent way to improve your own writing skills.)

How:  Print it out and put it in a locked drawer in the bottom of your desk.  Put all the work in a folder named "Open in January.

Why:  This lets you look at your own work with a critical editorial eye.  It gives you distance.

III.  Learn how publishing works

What:  Spend a solid 40 hours studying the publishing industry. 

How:  Start out by Googling everything you can find on the subject.  Then drop into places full of knowledgeable folks and ask questions.

Why:  If you were going to (a) take a job in Thailand for a year or (b) go to State Aggie to study animal husbandry or (c) work for Avis Rent-a-car, you'd do that much research about (a) the country, (b) the university or (c) the business.
Why would you go into writing with less preparation?

III. Learn about agents

What:  Start making a spread sheet of agents who work in your field.  See who they represent.  See who they sell to.  See what kind of deals they're making.  Find out what folks say about them. 
If they have an on-line presence, get a feel for who they are.

How:  Google.  Look at the acks in the front of books similar to your own writing.  Publisher's Lunch and Publisher's Marketplace.

Why:  That's the list you will query, when you query, if you decide you want an agent.  And after all, you have some time while your manuscript is resting. 

IV.  Revise

What:  When the manuscript has aged like, y'know, fine wine ... take it out of hiding and read it over.
Now you will revise.  Now you see what's wrong.

How: Read and correct as if someone else had written it.

Why:  Because, unless you have indeed done this, the manuscript is not as good as you can make it. 


V.  Find Beta Readers

What:  Beta readers take an entire manuscript that is ready for submission and crit it.  Beta readers, if possible, have never seen the manuscript before.

How:  Find them by doing beta reads for others.  Find them by making friends in writers forums.  Pay them in chocolate.

Why:  Because they will tell you if the whole thing works.  They'll point out illogical story lines.  They'll improve the manuscript.

 
VI.  Re-revise in light of the Beta read

'nuff said.






VII.  Get an agent ... or not

Three months have passed since you declared your manuscript finished. 

You will have read 10,000 words arguing Indie/Big Press/Small Press.
You'll have the best manuscript you can write in one hand and a significant bit of WIP in the other. 

Now you make this decision.

Self Publishing versus the 'Big Guys' Publishing

I'm following yet another discussion of whether one should self-publish or publish with a Major Publisher.  And I'm trying not to comment in the midst of that because this here is not my field of expertise.  I'm pretty much wholly ignorant about both sides of the arugment.

So I thought I'd go back here to my blog and talk about it in graphics, since I can make a fool of myself on my own blog.

Now, this is my wholly-made-up-guesswork take on the success rate of people who query their completed fiction manuscript to the major publishers in New York.
Remember, most submitted manuscripts are just purely awful.  Nobody who reads this blog falls into the perfectly dreadful manuscript group so you do not necessarily need to worry about the success rate in general.


This attractive graphic to the right is the getting-into-publication rate for those who decide to self- publish.  You will note it has a tiny sliver of folks who attempt this and do not quite succeed.  They are too gormless to use smashwords or the like.

I will just mention that I would fall into that select group were I to try to do this.




Now we hustle onward and come to some more sheer guesswork on my part.  This is the earnings per book.  The first brightly colored graphic attempts to convince you I know what novels earn in the first couple years after they're released by one of the major publishers.

Should mention that, when I say major publishers, I'm including not just the Big New York Six (soon to be Five), but about everybody who plays the print game and gets distributed by the big brick-and-mortar retailers.  Tor.  Kensington.  Them folk. 

The pinky-white slice is books that earn less than $1000.
Moving up in remuneration, and going counter-clockwise or the ill-fated widdershins direction, the red slice is books earning more than $1000, but less than $5000. 
I've assigned green to the great majority of books and assigned a profit of between $5000 and $15,000.
The navy blue slice is books that bring in more than $15,000.  It's not a negligible proportion, really.

.   

I would not go to the barricades to defend the accuracy of this graph ...  but it 'feels' about right.   If anything, I think I'm underestimating the percentage of books that earn more than $15,000.

And, at last, we come to the profits on self-published books.

The info I'm presenting with that big sweep of beige is that most self-published books earn less than $1000. 

Books that fall into that little sliver of higher profit tend to be erotica, or published by authors with a significant platform, or books by those also print published, or work from those who understand marketing and promote diligently.  

Or, of course, all four.

So what am I saying with all this other than I like pie charts?

There are mobs of prophets and orators out there who want to sell writers something -- whether it's a product or validation for their own choices.

What do you want out of publication? 

If you need artistic freedom, if you hunger to put your work in front of readers, if you have something you must say,  if you don't need or expect much money, if you know you can't be published by the Big Guys -- for whatever reason,
then self-publishing may be for you.
You're in good company.  Generations of LitFic writers have felt exactly this way.

If you want to reach more readers and have a reasonable chance to make enough money to live on frugally, (well ... very frugally) try for traditional publication.

Forbidden Rose is Out In Italian (and some other covers)

Forbidden Rose is coming to Italy.  Here.  I think maybe today.  I am so happy.

If you have an Italian grandmother, this will doubtless make a good present for her.

Okay.  Okay.  I know this is not of great general interest to anyone reading an English-language blog.  But my very first foreign translation, many years ago, was into Italian and I am just delighted and a half to see Forbidden Rose travel to that far country.


ETA:

Alert Reader Laura points out My Lord and Spymaster is available in -- I think that's Chinese.  The book is here and seems to be for sale, so if you happen to be learning to read Chinese it is available for a side-to-side. 

Following the MLAS tradition, established by the original, puzzling, this-is-not-related-to-the-story title, the Chinese cover has nothing whatsoever to do with the adventures of our Sebastian and Jess who, you will remember, only step foot on a ship while it is safely docked in London. 

I hope folks don't pick this one up looking for a hearty tale of adventure at sea.  And shipwreck.  I am uneasy about the fate of this ship on the cover. I mean, look at those rocks.  Ouch.

As long as I have you here looking at MLAS covers ... would you like to see the stunningly beautiful cover the German publisher has give me for My Lord and Spymaster?  Eine Riskante Affare.

Yes.  Of course you would.  Click on the picture and you'll get a close-up.

Isn't it lovely?


(It's up for pre-order here if you're studying German and want a good comparison read.  The first book, Die Geliebte des Meistrerspions, here, is a great translation.) 

Spymaster's Lady in audible German Woot! Woot!

It looks like The Spymaster's Lady (Die Geliebte des Meisterspions)
is coming out as an audible book in German next month. Here.  So wonderful!  Wow.

Der britische Meisterspion Robert Grey reist nach Frankreich, um die berüchtigte Spionin Annique Villiers aufzuspüren. Durch einen Zufall landen beide in derselben Gefängniszelle und müssen zusammenarbeiten, um sich zu befreien. Robert glaubt, dass Annique wertvolle Informationen über Napoleons geplanten Angriff auf England besitzt. Er will sie deshalb nach London bringen. Doch Annique gelingt es ein ums andere Mal, sich ihm zu entziehen. Und Robert muss schon bald feststellen, dass die schöne Französin tiefere Gefühle in ihm weckt.

Here's the printed version in German, btw.  I'm told the translation is wonderful.