puppies

I have four writing projects and one puppy project on the go for January and February. Cully, our new Standard Poodle puppy is banging at the door to get in. Puppy classes began a week ago and we are making some progress in sitting and standing.

Graphic designer Karen Phillips and I are working on the cover for Dangerous Journeys: A Superior Crime and other stories. I’ve finished editing and the launch date will be sometime in February after the manuscript makes it through the process at Create Space and Kindle Direct Publishing. I still have to write the cover copy.

Painting of Sorrow, a stand-alone novel outside of the Dangerous Journeys series, is out for editing. I’ll work on getting it publication-ready through the summer and publish in September or October.

I re-edited Murderous Roots, book 1 in the series and I’m proofreading the hard copy now. I hope to finish that by the end of February.

The Facepainter Murders is at the beginning of the re-edit phase. It should be finished and republished by the end of March.

That’s about it for another Sunday in the Kawarthas. Mild and sunny today. Has winter left or is it hiding, waiting to pounce on us again.

The Jewelled Egg Murders, published on December 1. Marketing the fifth book in a series depends, as I see it, in letting readers of the first four books know that it is available. To that end, I bought a package from Books Go Social, enrolled in Book of the Day at BGS, and took an ad in the holiday magazine at that site. I also have a package of twitter opportunities that goes out to about 10 thousand readers.

My dilemma is when to place it on Kindle Select. I hope to publish a volume of short stories, five of which involve the main character from the series. With luck, that will appear in February. Which leaves January as the most logical month to enroll in Kindle Select.

Another issue is spelling and grammar. I tried to write the first 4 books in American English. This was not successful and many Canadian/British spellings crept in, all interpreted as typos and mistakes in grammar. I wrote The Jewelled Egg Murders in Canadian English. The British editor, noticing that I spelled some words in American, thought those were typos. ie I use spelled not spelt(which is a variety of wheat here and in the USA).

No reviews as yet. I get it. It takes time, especially if you want to leave more comment than the stars you gave the book(if any), but even the star count would be encouraging to the authors of the books you read.

On a personal note: Our new puppy, Cully came home a week ago. She is now nine weeks old.