DOUBLE VISION and other updates!

Well, this is exciting — the sequel to SHADOW PLAY is off to the printers, meaning I should have copies within ten days and can start shipping these out. This one took a bit of time to get right; I had problems with my computer and only realized this morning (just as I was about to hit ‘send’) that two important clues in the original MS word version hadn’t saved, so I got hold of my typesetter and he was kind enough to fix it right away. Yayy!!!

I hope we caught all the tiny errors and typos but I know my sharp-eyed readers will pick those up and let me know. The nice thing about doing this, this way is that I can correct errors between print runs so we can identify those kinds of mistakes and fix them quickly.

I was at the Ottawa International Writers Festival last week with an all female panel of crime writers, which was a lot of fun, and I owe a big thanks to my friend Paula Wilson who came with me and helped stickhandle sales. Here’s a shot of me with organizer Sean Wilson (I don’t know the name of the other person who was also involved in the festival — we’re hunched over because we’re trying to all get in the frame of the shot and make sure that SHADOW PLAY was displayed!)

I had quite a few folks come over to where Paula and I were set up to sell books in the Festival Cafe and say they’d been looking in bookstores (one fellow had been to three in Ottawa !) trying to find my books, but of course, I don’t sell through bookstores.

I only sell through reboundpress.com, as I need to make this small press work and while I love bookstores, and spend a fortune in them myself, the discount they need from the list price in order to keep afloat themselves would put me under. So I hope readers continue to order online or search me out at author events and author pop-ups if they’re local so that we can keep this series going. The good news, though, is that I have HUNGRY GHOSTS in stock again (it had sold out) as well as UMBRELLA MAN and SHADOW PLAY:

The other good news this week is that I now have the rights back to the entire Inspector Ramirez series! I had already put UMBRELLA MAN and HUNGRY GHOSTS back in print; hope to get THE BEGGAR’S OPERA and THE POISONED PAWN back in print this year as well.

And we are moving forward with The Toby Awards: a pal in Victoria who does silversmithing is coming up with little eyeglasses for the metal Toby and another friend is working on a wooden base for it. Hope to start meeting with some of the folks who offered to help — maybe later this week or the week after — and figure out how to get readers involved — it’s been so crazy busy at work that I haven’t had time to think about this, but I’m on it now! As a reminder, the Toby Award will for Canadian mystery authors, who like me, fall through the cracks (Nita Prose, at our panel, called me a “hybrid”) because we were shortlisted and won literary awards previously when published by traditional publishers but no longer qualify now that we are self-published and not selling through regular retail channels.

The other Toby Award will be for jacket cover art for Canadian mystery novels (I haven’t decided yet whether to keep that one Indy as well, or open it up — hope to get some input on that front). My hope is that libraries will get involved in that one, because the covers, as you can see above, can be spectacularly beautiful and complex, and there is no national Canadian award for jacket cover art. I have it in my head that libraries will display the top ten and have a way for readers to vote for their favourites, so if you are with a library and might be interested, let me know!

Updates on DOUBLE VISION!

I can’t believe I haven’t posted here for over a month — it’s just been crazy busy at work (real estate in Ottawa is hopping!). But I’ve done what I can to keep moving things forward with DOUBLE VISION, the sequel to SHADOW PLAY, and I’m happy to say I sent it off last week to the printer for proofs and hope to have proofs sometime this coming week.

I’m hoping any changes will be minor so that my typesetter can turn things around quickly and then it’s back to the printers for the full print run, which is usually about a week and a half.

This book is not available in bookstores, but you can pre-order it now through reboundpress.com or wait until I have actual stock — it will get shipped right to your mailbox! I will be doing some author pop-ups in and around Ottawa as well if you’re in the area. And you can find a short summary of the book on that website too!

Here’s the final cover! Terry Smith, as always, did a fabulous job on this one!

DOUBLE VISION!

I’m excited to let you all know that the sequel to SHADOW PLAY, DOUBLE VISION, should be available for pre-order next week through reboundpress.com. It’s a direct sequel to SHADOW PLAY (the action starts two weeks later) and brings back the entire ensemble cast. Here’s the pitch:

“Damien Echo is a street-smart psychic scammer who takes advantage of vulnerable people. But when she meets an elderly client to help locate the woman’s missing dog, the Ouija board shoots out a plea for help along with an address, and this time Damien hasn’t done anything to manipulate the pointer. She checks it out and discovers what appears to be a suicide victim inside an unlocked apartment, as well as a carefully hidden cellphone that Damien steals.

“Detective Jamie Wallace is a Homicide detective with the Rideau Regional Police in Canada’s capital. Valerie Sanderson’s death looks like a suicide, given the lack of forensic evidence, but Jamie’s gut tells her the woman was murdered and so do her visions. All she knows for sure, though, is that either the victim actually killed herself or there’s a particularly sophisticated killer who’s hidden their tracks.

“As Jamie and Detective Michel Tremblay investigate the woman’s death, Jamie soon discovers that all the information she needs to solve the case is on a cellphone that she and Tremblay can’t find. And the only person who can help her reconstruct the missing data is a ruthless killer himself.”

Self-publishing: Part 4 – Finding a printer!

Self-publishing a novel – Part 3. Why you need a proof!

Self-publishing a trade paperback – Part 2

Here are two new videos I posted on Youtube today — these ones are all about typesetting and the size of your book!

How to self-publish a trade paperback – my tips! Part 1

I’ve decided to do a series of Youtube videos to help those of you who are considering self-publishing understand what’s involved in it. It’s a challenge, and I can likely save you some time and money by telling you what you need to know. I’m also hoping to do some workshops down the road in the Ottawa area! Here’s the first five in the series: I hope to have around ten in total, so do check back later this week!

UMBRELLA MAN is coming back into print!

Super happy that UMBRELLA MAN is going to be back in print again soon! It’s about a Russian citizen who is murdered on the Malecon in Cuba. Slava Kadun, a Russian FSB agent, is sent to Cuba to investigate, but Inspector Ramirez suspects he’s the killer.

UMBRELLA MAN hit the #7 spot on the Toronto Star national bestseller list the first week it was released and it introduced Slava Kadun, who is truly one of my favourite characters. (He reappears in SHADOW PLAY and a lot of my readers have a giant crush on him.)

Hoping to be ready to take pre-orders on the reboundpress.com site perhaps as early next week and have UMBRELLA MAN ready to ship by mid-March.