All my books are free in digital formats during the Smashwords summer sale, which continues until the end of July. Click the link to get to my profile page on Smashwords; from there you can see all my books. Quite a few of them by now! I don’t write a lot every day but I keep writing and it adds up over time.
The sale started July 1. I knew there was something I forgot to tell you…
For the next month, Smashwords is giving away ebooks from many many authors in a stay-at-home event called Authors Give Back.
If you’re like me and not into romance or covers with chiseled torsos, you might be put off by the Smashwords best sellers. But there are plenty of other types of books there. Worth a bit of digging.
All of my ebooks will be free there during this giveaway.
I’ve finished the DDsE series! (Ella has completed her diary! For now…) To celebrate, for the next couple days, the digital version of the series will be free on Amazon. (The 3rd and final book goes freebie on Saturday.)
I started DDsE as a break from writing my FRAMES series. I’ve never needed such a break before but FRAMES takes a surprising lot of energy. I speculate it’s the combination of world-building plus characters who are not human.
Anyway, the break turned long when DDsE became a series, too. I didn’t dare to pause DDsE and go back to FRAMES, though, lest Nica take over Ella’s diary. Once Nica gets into my head, she doesn’t settle for being the narrator in FRAMES. She takes over. Other books. Conversations. Everything. For a while she wrote my work emails. (How did that go, you ask? Let’s just say it’s a good thing I was about to retire.)
To further celebrate my return to writing FRAMES, Nica of Los Angeles (FRAMES #1) is also free on Amazon as an ebook for the next couple days.
Discovered this cool milestone today at Smashwords, an ebook distributor in the midst of their gi-normous summer giveaway. My ebooks have 1,000 “purchases” via Smashwords.
Now, most of these purchases have been free in giveaways. And people tend to hoard ebooks, unopened, after such sales. But at least a few have read my books. They post reviews; during future sales, they acquire later volumes in series; they bookmark me as an author they want to find again.
Nowadays I don’t care much about getting customers for my books but I most definitely want readers. Through the month of July, you can download any/all of my books from my page at Smashwords, in any/all ebook formats.
10 lords a-leaping, 1,000 readers hoarding…
Thousands of free and reduced-price ebooks now on Smashwords in the end-of year sale.
The free loot includes all of my novels.
Download it for free on Amazon on Wednesday July 25.
When rookie private eye Nica takes on a mysterious case, she enters a world of multiple dimensions called Frames, where buildings and lawn chairs can be sentient, a stray cat has great powers, books can be killers, and clouds can be spies. At home, Nica solves missing person cases; in the larger reality of the Frames, she gets swept into an escalating battle with stakes that could not be higher.
That describes the first novel in my FRAMES quartet.
Those who’ve read it will be happy to see that the new cover features Monk and Miles…
Download it for free on Amazon for one day only, Wednesday July 25.
A girl, a boy, a feral cat, pursuit by unhuman things… A 16-year-old girl keeps a diary about her formerly normal life, now twisted by horrible amazing events.
On Saturday, July 14, over on Amazon, you can get the first 3 novellas of the DDsE series, compiled into one ebook volume, DDsE: The Beginning.
DDsE is the diary of 16-year-old Ella … with occasional entries by the feral cat Grayfast. More generally, it is a young adult paranormal horror romance.
Learn more, read a sample, or get your free download of DDsE: The Beginning here.
(For those keeping score: DDsE started out as daily blog posts but most readers preferred to read it in longer compilations. Thus were the novellas born. DDsE will eventually consist of 9 novellas. All 9 should be done by the end of this year. I’m publishing the novellas individually over on Smashwords, where the first 6 are already available (and also free, through the end of July). I’m combining the novellas into fewer, longer books on Amazon. The second Amazon compilation (novellas 4, 5, 6) will publish in mid-September. You can pre-order DDsE: The Middle now.) (Ready for the DDsE publication quiz?)
I’ve got a new series of books called DDsE and you can start reading for free; download an e-version* from Smashwords**.
DDsE is a teen/YA (young adult) paranormal horror romance that will ultimately be 9 short volumes. Books 1 and 2 are now on-line. Books 3-5 will be available within weeks; the remaining 4 are coming within the next year.***
What’s DDsE about? Here’s a blurb:
Being sixteen is Tupac Eminem. Ella has no one to talk to except her new diary, which she has to hide from Ma and Pa Warden, the foster parents she’s stuck with since her family got flattened in a car accident. Now that she lives with the wardens, she has to switch to a new school, where people act like her tragedy is contagious. Her new suburb is just as boring as the last, and offers no hope of secret passageways or magic. But life is not all bad. There’s an interesting boy at the new school – although his family turns out to be impossibly dangerous. And there’s a feral cat, living in the suburb’s only open space, a pitiful excuse for woods. Sometimes the cat invades Ella’s mind. She tells her diary, ‘I’ve gone a special kind of crazy, a split personality. And my other personality is a cat, not a person.’
* Eventually, I’ll compile the short volumes and make them available as paperbacks, too.
** Soon, DDsE will also be downloadable at the Apple iStore, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Noisetrade. Eventually, it will come to Amazon, too.
*** Some of you may say, “Wait, I thought you were sending DDsE to publishers, is that effort kaput?” Still in progress. Three have declined. The first two liked the story but didn’t like the narrator. The third one loved the narrator but didn’t like the story. (I forgot how maddening this process can be.) Other verdicts are still out but apparently I don’t have enough patience (nor, perhaps, enough decades) to grind through the submission process.
Nica of the New Yorks (FRAMES book 2) is here! And, on Friday, December 16, you can download the e-version for free from Amazon.
FRAMES is a speculative detective fantasy series that will eventually comprise four books. Book 1, Nica of Los Angeles, will also be free on December 16.
* I suppose one is not actually nicking the book if the author makes it available for free. I suppose I might have said, instead, “FRAMES, free this Friday”.
Scroll on to learn a bit about book 2.
Now that Nica has a taste for life in the Frames – the endless multiple dimensions so bogglingly like yet unlike our own – she can’t wait to get back to work with the allies in the fight against Maelstrom. Being Nica, she applies her detective skills to solve problems she hasn’t been asked or permitted to tackle. Meanwhile, the universe prepares for war. In the New Yorks are Frames of such power that the land imparts strange partial sentience to all, and Nica’s roster of allies includes old pals and recent comrades plus local beings, landforms, and structures, notably a self-help book, a river, and a street musician with an unfathomably dark past.
Read for Review:My latest novel, Nica of Los Angeles, publishes on September 4 and is available for pre-order now! This is the first in the FRAMES series, a speculative fantasy with detective and dystopian elements. I’m excited about this series and the reactions Nica is getting so far! One thing is certain – you haven’t read anything quite like this before.
If you’ve been around the indie publication block a few times, you know how important reviews are to indie books like Nica. So, if you will write a review I will give you a free e-copy of Nica (except – in reverse order; but you knew that). To get your copy, leave a comment here… or message me on Goodreads, before the end of July.
Not ready to commit? Read the thumbnail and synopsis below. Or read the first several chapters, which are serialized right here on this blog.
When rookie private eye Nica takes on a mysterious case, she enters a world of multiple dimensions called Frames, where buildings and lawn chairs can be sentient, where a stray cat has great powers, where books can be killers, and clouds can be spies. At home, Nica tackles missing persons cases, while in the larger reality of the Frames she is swept into an escalating battle between good and evil.
Nica Sheridan Taggart Ambrose Taggart Ickovic (S.T.A.T.Ic.) craves action and change, which leaves her life as stable as old dynamite; and though she’s had more than her share of tragedy, she maintains an unquenchable spirit. Her restless nature has led her into several marriages and countless jobs. Now she appoints herself as a private detective, and her shingle is barely dry when she gets not one but three pairs of clients demanding her attention.
First comes a noxious couple that Nica secretly dubs Mathead and Scabman, who claim to seek a certain duffel bag; repelled, Nica declines their money but they won’t go away. Then, the Garcias hire her to find a missing, 15-year-old goddaughter; Nica doesn’t trust them, but decides she can help the girl in spite of them. Both cases pale beside the third demand for her services.
I became aware that the air had changed. My office smelled like a forest just after a flash flood, when everything is power-washed and tree trunks are smeared with riverbed mud. Fresh and wild.
It took much strength to gently lower that window, but the stranger’s arms – all sinew and muscle – showed no strain. I took a step back to get a fuller look and to get farther away. He was a wolf. I don’t mean a predatory flirt, I mean he was long and lean and fast and dangerous: coarse black hair, ice-gray eyes and smile full of teeth, supreme confidence backed with survival instinct.
“Please sit down,” I suggested or pleaded as I retreated behind my desk. As he complied, muscles flexed inside his garments, a loose cotton tunic and drawstring pants that were as gray as February.
She sat down, too. My other visitor was a princess: not as in daddy’s spoiled girl, as in future queen of the fairies. She was as ethereal as he was earthy, exotic but I couldn’t place the ethnic background. Cornsilk hair, slanted eyes like unpolished silver, her skin like the penny you’ve always kept in your pocket for luck. Her tunic was white as a desert sunrise.
“We are in need of your detective arts,” she said.
“That tends to be why people come to this office.” The joke was stillborn. “I’m usually good with accents but I can’t place yours. Where are you from?”
“I first arrived in the place you call Kansas.”
“Huh.” I’ve been to Kansas and there is nobody like her there. I decided I would not call her a liar and looked to him expectantly.
“Knowledge of my ancestry provides no value. We have need of your assistance,” he said, in a voice that never needed help from anybody.
“The fate of the free worlds is at stake,” she added, in a voice like the first spring breeze on snow.
“Oh-kay.” Note to self, cancel ad in Nutjob Quarterly.
Despite this bizarre introduction, Nica instinctively trusts these two, Anwyl and Anya, who draw her into adventures beyond imagining – and she’s got a crazy imagination. They travel into other dimensions called Frames, often with the Watts Towers – which are folk art sculptures in Nica’s Frame, but sentient, animate beings elsewhere. Nica learns to avoid books, which form deadly mercenary armies; to keep silent around clouds, which can be spies; and to view her stray cat warily, since cats are beings of great power and you never know what side they’re on. There is danger everywhere in the Frames, but also a mind-boggling expansion of reality. For once, Nica feels challenged, engrossed, and strangely at home.
In this first book of the FRAMES series, a band of allies that includes structures, landforms, and creatures sets out to stop Warty Sebaceous Cysts, a repulsive trio who casually commit genocide as part of their plan to free their imprisoned leader, Maelstrom. Freedom for Maelstrom would bring cruelty and horror to all the Frames, so Nica joins the allies’ cause without hesitation, though her efforts get her in trouble with the law at home, and in danger of mind control, pain, and death in other Frames. As she sees it, she was born to travel the Frames.
Cover art by Lars Huston.
Required Writing 