Just released!

Now for sale at Amazon, Saronna's Gift, is available in both papaperback and ebook formats. If you buy the paperback, the Kindle Matchbook feature will let you "buy" the ebook for free! The ebook is also available to borrow for free from both Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. KU is a subscription service Amazon offers. The KOLLis a benefit for people who have Amazon Prime and also own an actual Kindle or Kindle Fire device.

This has been a long time coming, and I have learned a lot from the process. In a few days I will post about the it. Meanwhile, here's the opening of the new book:

A warm summer breeze caught Saronna’s veil and almost pulled it loose. She stopped to tuck the folds around her face, to ensure nothing showed except her eyes. By the time she had picked up her valise, her father had almost disappeared into the crowd. She hurried to catch up, darting in and out among the throng as fast as she could without attracting notice.

Where were they going? Her father had told her to pack her belongings. That had to mean he planned another attempt to sell her, but he had given her no clue whom he planned to visit today. 

Even after their earlier trips to New Jerusalem, the city still disconcerted Saronna. Vendors’ cries, chattering voices, ground cars rolling past, and countless footfalls were enough to distract her, let alone the sight of so many strangers. Faces flashed past, some veiled, some bearded, and disappeared into the mass of humanity, never to be seen again.
She caught up to her father just as he turned suddenly, moving through the tall steel supports of the Strangers’ Gate, into the off-world quarter. Saronna had never been there. She gripped her valise tighter as a shiver of apprehension ran through her. Would her talent work as well on an off-world man?

Almost there!

I finally finished the corrections on the proof copy of Saronna's Gift, and uploaded new files to both CreateSpace and KDP. I decided to get the next proof copy with a glossy cover, though, because I am not entirely happy with the look of the matte version.

I am getting excited!  Here's the blurb and front cover:

Saronna Maynard never expected to be sold into an off-world household. She and Duncan Trushenko, her new protector, have very little in common, except for living in the same house. Saronna grew up in a small village outside of New Jerusalem, the largest city on Krueger’s World. Duncan grew up on many worlds, and has traveled the galaxy. He is dumbstruck to return from a business trip and find that his father has purchased a companion for him.

Saronna is terrified by the strangeness of the house and her sense of powerlessness, but in a very short time she realizes she might be better off—and safer—in Duncan’s house than in her father’s. For one thing, Duncan doesn’t believe in witches. Also, the more she’s with Duncan, the harder it is for her to believe all men are as evil as her mother taught her. But safer or not, Saronna is still intent on keeping her secrets. After all, she’s still on Krueger’s World. 

Happy New Year! Looking forward to 2015

End of year sale on MS Word templates

If you are interested in self publishing in print, you really should check out the sale at BookDesignTemplates.com. When you buy a Word template from them, you not only get the templates, with all the necessary styles and fonts needed, you get really good written instructions on how to use the template to create a PDF that can be used for a print book. The only thing I don't think was included in the directions was a reminder to change the hyphenation settings, if needed. The first time I generated a PDF, the hypenation was funky (e.g., fa-ther). MS Word lets you set a length for minimal hyphenation, and also control how many consectuive lives can end in hyphenation. Changing that setting really made my book look better. 

The templates are incredibly useful for printed book, because the styles handle things like making the page layout different on the first page of a new chapter. Unless you're a real expert in Word, it's a total lifesaver.

The sales ends 12/31/2014, so check it out NOW!

Saronna's Gift has been proofed!

I have the report back from the proofer and will be ordering a new proof copy soon. I think I will try the glossy cover this time, to see which one I like better. 

I have discovered I am terrible at proofing, so it was a good thing I had help. Also, if you're interested in procnostication, this site has some predictions for self publishing in 2015. We'll see in a year how they did. 

Happy New Year, everyone! 

Proof copies are here!

I got my proof copies of Saronna's Gift today! I don't care what publishers say, publishing in print is much, much more work than publishing ebooks. And since you can't tell a reader to re-download a print book, proofing for errors is much more wearing.

Here's how it looks so far.

Weddings versus marriages

I make stuff up a lot. My stories are generally set in a possible future or in a nonexistent time and place. And one of the things I consider in making up a culture is, how people pair off. I am off the opinion that marriage might change over time but will probably not go away completely. The urge to formalize a union is ingrained in our culture. That's one reason why gay people fought so hard for the right to marry. My daughter likes to watch wedding shows on so-called reality TV, and it amazes me to see the money and time people spend on getting married.

Weddings are big business right now. Some people make a enormous production out of getting married. They spend thousands of dollars on the clothes, the food and drink, and sometimes the venue. Destination weddings, which take place at faraway location not lived in by either the bride or groom's family, are an actual thing.

For our family, this was the year of the three weddings. My husband and I between us have a total of 12 nieces and nephews. Four of them were already married, but three more got married just this year. We went to all three weddings, and I noticed something.

All this year's weddings have some things in common:

• All three were outdoors. One was on the beach, one was on a rooftop terrace, and one was in a backyard.
• All three brides wore white dresses.
• All three ceremonies were performed by a friend or relative, rather than a minister or government official.
• None of the ceremonies were at all religious. 
• All three couples took a chance on the weather, and all three were in luck.

On the other hand, the three weddings were all a bit different in that they varied as to size, expense, and overall tone. The backyard wedding, catered by Chipotle, was the smallest. The beach wedding was the largest, and it was catered by an excellent restaurant.

I don't know how much longer people will go on spending the equivalent of a down payment on a house on a one-day event, but even if weddings get less expensive, I think they'll continue. Your family doesn't fly in from the coast when you move in with someone, but they do for your wedding because a wedding is a statement of intent, and a time to celebrate. The format, venues, and budget might change, but I think weddings will be around for a long time.

The photo above is of a wedding from a few years ago, when my nephew married a lovely young woman from Cuernavaca (it's not a destination wedding if your family lives there). That wedding was a blast! I will say that in Mexico, they know how to celebrate a marriage.

It's Capclave weekend!

DC-area folks, Capclave 2014 starts today at the Gaithersburg Hilton! The program is online, if you want to check it out.  This year they even have a special version for phones and other mobile devices.

How I spent my summer vaction

It wasn't actually summer, since we went in mid-September, but my husband and I just came back from a fabulous two-week trip to England, Wales, and Scotland. We spent about half the time in London and the rest on a coach tour (that sounds so much classier than a bus tour, doesn't it?). The tour took us to Hampton Court, Stonehenge, Bath, Stow-on-the-Wold, Stratford-On-Avon, Chester, the Lake District, Wales (just barely), Scotland (Gretna, Edinburgh, and Sir Walter Scott's home Abbotsford), York, and Cambridge.

We had a blast! I just hope we didn't do too much damage.

Another free ebook!

Updated to show this is now free on Amazon, too! 

It's actually not that easy to give away an ebook, at least not via a vendor site.  Amazon's KDP platform will only let an author make a book free a very limited number of days, and the ebook has to be exclusive to the Kindle store.  None of my books are exclusive to Amazon at the moment. I only do that for the first 90 days when I launch a new book.

However, Smashwords is another story. Smashwords sets no limits on making books free, and when it's free on Smashwords, most of the retailers they distribute to follow suit, eventually. Sometimes it takes them a while, though. But in the meantime, you can get the free ebook from Smashwords in any format, including Kindle and ePub, and always DRM-free. See this post if you want info on putting Smashwords books on a Kindle.

So, I wanted to make another book free. I happen to have one novella for sale, Where Magic Rules, my only fantasy. It has magic and a dragon! I decided to make it free wherever possible as a sort of "summer sale." I changed the price to be free on Smashwords, and the next day it was also free in iBooks!  It took a little longer, but eventually Nook (B&N) and then the Kindle stores followed suit. No luck in the Kobo store yet, but I am watching for the change.  The info on this ebook, my only fantasy, as of now, is listed below. I plan to keep it free for a while, a few weeks or even months.

Where Magic Rules
Joseph Andrews wandered away from an Army Reserve training exercise and into an alternate world where magic rules science and mages rule the land. He has learned the language and taken service with the kindest mage he can find, but he still dreams of the real world.    

When Joe rescues a wounded soldier in service to a dark lord, he finds he has saved not a young boy but a woman who calls herself Phillip and insists she's really a man. Joe is shocked when the Great Mage orders him to go on a quest with Phillip, but his surprise is mild compared to Phillip's outrage. 

Part road movie, part romantic comedy, this novella follows Joe and Phillip as they try to fulfill the Great Mage's demand without killing each other along the way.  

From the Amazon reviews:

“Whatever you have been expecting of a dragon, except for being large, winged, and reptilian, it probably isn't like this dragon. He's one of the most charming characters in the story. I won't reveal any more of the plot, except to say that I enjoyed the book and its twists. While its not a humorous tale, there is quite a bit of humor in it, which was one of the main charms of the story.”

“I've downloaded so many books lately that start off well, but disintegrate a little ways in - it's a real joy to discover a new author who holds her ground throughout.” (review by Janis Ian)

Currently this novella is free in the US Kindle store, and on Smashwords, iBooks, and the Nook store (Barnes & Noble).Hopefully it will be free in the Kobo store soon.  If you want it for your Kindle and you're not in the US, you can get it free from Smashwords and side-load it to the Kindle, or you can try clicking the "tell us about a cheaper price" link on the books Kindle page in your store, and then paste in the link to the Nook store.

Good news (I hope!) for Jane Austen fans and P.D. James fans

Some time ago I wrote a review of Death Comes to Pemberley by PD James. The novel is both a sequel to Pride and Prejudice and a murder mystery. PBS plans to air a dramatization of the book as a Masterpiece Theater miniseries that starts this coming October.

I really, really hope they didn't muck it up! It looks okay from the preview, but you never know.

Yay for Kindle Paperwhite's new Page Flip feature!

Please note: This post is on the original Page Flip feature which was only available on some Kindles, not the enhanced all-apps and Kindles feature from 2016. For a review of the newer features, see this post from The Digital Reader.

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I own (and love) a Kindle first gen Paperwhite.  One of the things I lost switching from the Kindle Touch to the Paperwhite was the text-to-speech feature. I didn't like giving up TTS, but I knew about that ahead of time, so I was okay with it.

One thing I was not okay with was the original Paperwhite software did not support the next chapter/previous chapter function. The Touch had it; even the Kindle Keyboard (aka the Kindle 3) had it. The K3 used left and right arrow keys to move to the next or previous chapter, and the Touch used an up and down page swipe. When I got the Paperwhite, I was dismayed to find that up and down page swipes had no effect at all.

The Go To menu on the Paperwhite has a list of chapters, but it was annoying to have to invoke that menu when I used to just flip chapters with page swipes.  I had heard the new (2nd gen) Paperwhite had a feature called Page Flip, but I had never seen it.

The other day I started re-reading an old Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile, featuring Hercule Poirot. It was the first Hercule Poirot I read on the Kindle, and one thing that used to annoy me is Christie would have Poirot sling out not only exclamations but whole sentences in French. The Paperwhite will translate highlighted text, but you have to have the wireless on, or (to put it in new Kindle-speak) you have to turn airplane mode off. Usually, I turn the wireless connection on only when I am downloading a book, but because of  Hercule Poirot, I left it on for a couple of days, most of which was spent within range of my home wifi (my Kindles always have 3G, too).

Consequently, my Kindle got the new Paperwhite update! It now has several new features, most importantly, Page Flip. The (slightly fuzz) screenshot above shows what it looks like. It's even more like browsing a print book than the old function was. You invoke it with an upward swipe and it opens a secondary window on the screen.  Within that window you can jump forward and backward chapters or pages and then either go to the new location or return to where you where. It is totally cool!

Merci, Monsieur Poirot!