NEWS AND VIEWS

I hope to get back to my Wednesday Blog post schedule, but am posting this early (or very late) because, after almost two months of e-mails with Amazon, my memoir, THE GREEN BOUGH, is finally going into their Countdown program. For seven days, starting June 3rd, it will be priced at $.99 instead of $2.99.

That’s the e-book. The paperback version is getting its slight updating now and will be published by Createspace soon.

I’ve mentioned before, I think, that the paper book has been my most popular at all the 2-3 book fairs I’ve attended every year for six years, and customers often come back for extra copies to give to friends and relatives.

Recently, however, looking for a possible new audience for the story, I did a bit of rewriting, added a teen romance, titled it A YEAR IN PARNEL, and submitted it to Kensington’s Lyrical imprint for New Adult books. I received the following rejection.

“I’ve had the opportunity to read your book and really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, as a romance imprint of Kensington, your NA submission doesn’t have strong enough romantic elements for me to offer contract.

“But so you know, even when I knew the book wasn’t necessarily for Lyrical, I still kept reading because I thought it was that good. Well-written, historically accurate and enjoyable. Even though there is a bit of a romantic thread throughout the story, it’s more about the awakening of this young woman, which, by the way, is really well done. Lovely in itself.

“Thank you for considering us and I wish you all the best.”

It’s not often one gets a rejection as complimentary as this, and, if I submit it elsewhere and get a contract, I’ll let you know.

Meanwhile, my three Sherlock Holmes novellas are on Amazon (promotion to be done later), I have a straight romance coming from Coffeetown Press in November, plus I submitted my two cozy mysteries to a California publisher and received a contract for both for 2016. So the year is going well.