Exciting Book News

First I want to remind you that Life Lessons will be MLR’s free book of the day on their website tomorrow, Dec. 22nd 2014. (Midnight to midnight US Pacific time.) If you’ve been thinking about maybe reading it, but hesitated to spend the money, here’s your chance. Although Life Lessons is the first in a series, the story stands alone as a HFN ending (and the two short stories immediately after Book 1 are free.) You can download your copy at MLR Press tomorrow : http://www.mlrbooks.com/Special.php
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In even more exciting news, I have a new book coming out. In, um, a couple of days. Yeah. Really. This is a short holiday novel called Second Act.

I wasn’t going to do a holiday story this year. In early November, I was writing my new mystery for NationalNovel WritingMonth, trying to complete 50K words on it in 30 days. Then Dion appeared and tapped on my metaphorical shoulder. “You need to write Bryce’s story.”

Now what I should have done was said, “Get thee behind me, Dion.” Because it was November and I was busy, and real, organized authors were already releasing their holiday stories and touring blogs and all. But you know, gay man behind a straight woman? No fun at all, and he was kind of cute. So I said, “What? Not your own story, smart guy?”

“Nope. Bryce needs to move on. He’s finally going home for Christmas this year and it won’t turn out quite like he thought it would.”

I think I said a few swearwords in there, because you know the story was already pulling me. “I don’t have time.” Maybe I whined that bit. “I’ll lose at the 50K for NaNo WriMo.”

Dion leaned closer. “It’ll be short. 10K. Maybe 15. Hell, you can do that in a few days, and still go over the 50 on the other book.”

“Well…”

“You did a holiday story every year. And to All a Good Night. Where the Heart Is. The Family We’re Born With. You’re gonna just skip this year?”

“That was the theory.”

“Here. I’ll get Bryce to tell you all about Cody, his folks, and why he left town when he was just 18.”

“Crap.”

“It’ll be quick. I swear.”

Well, Dion is a lying liar, because 63K words later he’s grinning, I didn’t win NaNo, and there’s this holiday book written. And it’s December. Mid December.

I was going to put it aside and polish it for next year. So there. But Dion reminded me that there are a ton of books on my hard drive I was going to polish up “later” and never did.

So instead I begged help from some wonderful people – Jonathan Penn, who served as editor; Kira Ceeden, Kendra and Shelby and Jay, who betaed; Joanna at BookCoverMasterClass who looked at my crappy self-made cover and did a new one for me in two days. (Look up there. Isn’t that pretty?)

This will be a self pub, a short novel. I’m hoping to get it out by the 24th, but not promising, just in case. Hopefully it will be fun. And Dion will quit nagging me.