One Good Woman

My publisher, New Concepts Publishing, presented me with an early holiday gift. For whatever reason, they were able to move my futuristic romance novel, One Good Woman, up in the publishing schedule. Instead of being released next February, it is now available in ebook format from my publisher's site.

One Good Woman continues and completes my futuristic romance series, The Solonian Chronicles. Not only does this novel bring together two favorite characters with their own story, it wraps up the entire series with a message of hope and courage.

For those of you not familiar with this series, Solonia is a small colony composed of all women set in a future earth. The world has been sent back to a pre-technological era after an asteroid strikes the earth. Humans survive in small colonies and everyday is a struggle. Solonia believed they were the only survivors for centuries. When a wasting sickness devastated their male population, many of their men turned to a steroid like plant product and turned into vicious sub-human beasts. With their population slowly dwindling, the Solonia women turn to a band of shipwrecked colonists newly arrived on their continent. The Realm is composed of courageous adventurers. The blending of the two people strikes sparks as the cautious, distrustful women of Solonia dare to fall in love with the risk taking, heroic men of the Realm.

Each book starts with a historical account of the time as recorded in the work from one of the rebirthed universities of the time. Read the histories for all four books here.

My publisher as offered the first chapter free on their website and I've added another excerpt to my website.

If you've been a fan of the first three books, I know you'll love this one. I'm sad to see this series end. The Greater Good was the first book I ever wrote. After many revisions it found a home at New Concepts. I thank them for taking a chance on a new author and all the readers who also risked trying out an unknown.

It's the Little Joys

Today I made one of my favorite purchases for my writing business. I purchased my 2010 day planner. I have so much fun looking through the different styles, comparing covers, and checking out all the extras. So many choices.

First of all, one must consider the size. The last few years I've gone with the smaller nine by six with a week on facing pages. I have to write small in those spaces though so this year I decided to go either with the bigger, full-sized model or the planner with one entire page for each date. It took me ten minutes to decide on the bigger one with a week on facing pages.

Then I have to look at the covers. I need something that will survive getting stuffed into bags and carried here and there. Last year I splurged on real leather. The same planner in the large style I wanted cost $25. I went with faux blue leather instead for $17.

I had to check out the extras. I don't really need those pretty maps of the world in the back but they were in all my finalists. My final choice had the usual conversion charts and information about other countries, population and units of currency. I need that as much as I need the world maps. Now it did have a wine vintage guide. They didn't mention the local wines I like to sample. Can't figure out why.

Of course I would never buy a planner that didn't have one of those little ribbons to mark my page and this one also has the rip-off corners. Last year's didn't have that so I'm doing that tonight.

Oh the joy of sniffing the brand new faux leather and marking the important dates in my new planner. Everything will be so neat for a while.

On the more serious side, filling in those dates in my planner reminds me of the goals I've set and the future I intend to pursue in my budding career as a writer. I have release dates to fill in for January, The Keepers of Futhark, and for April 30th, To Tame a Tiger. My planner reminds me I'm going somewhere, slowly but surely. And when next November rolls around and I buy a new planner, I'll have a release date to mark for January, 2011 for Beyond the Gate.

Do you love your planner as much as I love mine.

First Review for 'Futhark Chronicles'

What an exciting day for me. The Keepers of Futhark will be released in January but today I read the first review. Publisher's Weekly posted a review and said many kind things about my book. One little zinger about the start of the book and then everything was roses. I hope someone uses those reviews to make their must read lists.

I know there's often discussions on blogs about whether or not people read reviews to determine their shopping lists for books. I often do just that. ROF used to have pages of book reviews though the space allowed for that in their new, recently rescued, magazine is much less. I bought one of my daughter's favorite books after reading a review for it there. My daughter and I both highlight books each month in RT and intend to buy them. Of course, Keepers won't be reviewed in RT because it's not a romance. The only beef I have with PW was the way they referred to the book as a romantic fantasy. I would rather term it an epic fantasy with a romantic subplot but I won't complain too much if some readers buy it because of the romance.

Do you read reviews and allow them to dictate your must read list? Where do you find your reviews and have you ever felt misled by one?