A Great Review for To Hell in a Handbasket

I recently found a great review from a mystery reader/reviewer for the second book in my Claire Hanover gift basket designer series, To Hell in a Handbasket. The Mysteries and My Musings blog said: "This was a great adventure murder mystery that will be hard to top." Read the full review HERE. Featuring winter sports such as skiing, snowshoeing, and snowmobiling, To Hell in a Handbasket makes for a great winter holiday read! Amazon and Barnes & Noble both still have the book on sale for 21-33% off list price, depending on format. Got any mystery readers on your holiday gift list?

Visits to Inkspot and Dru's Book Musings

Today I am appearing elsewhere on the web in two places at once. I hope you'll visit both and leave a comment for me at them!

At Inkspot, the blog for Midnight Ink authors, I have posted an article about Internal and External Conflict, using examples from my Claire Hanover gift basket designer novels, A Real Basket Case and To Hell in a Handbasket. Do you have any favorite examples of external or internal conflicts in books you’ve read? Please share them with me there!

At Dru's Book Musings, my gift basket designer sleuth, Claire Hanover, visits to talk about a day in her life. This day is an especially bad one, from the beginning of To Hell in a Handbasket. I'm holding a contest at Dru's blog, in conjunction with Claire's visit, for a free autographed copy of the trade paperback version of To Hell in a Handbasket. Just leave a comment for Claire or me there to enter the contest!

Release News for TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET

Yesterday was the official release date for the trade paperback and ebook editions of To Hell in a Handbasket, the second book in my Claire Hanover gift basket designer series. The active link takes you to my website, where you can read the book's blurb, reviews, and excerpts and get a list of discussion questions you can use if your book club decides to read and discuss the book.

In honor of the release, the New York Journal of Books posted a positive review yesterday that includes the statement, "This book will keep the reader turning pages until the very satisfying end." Follow the link to read the whole review. I'm very excited about it!

Also in honor of the release, an interview with me appeared yesterday on the Shimmerfall blog. Go read it and enter the contest! My interview there is one of many mystery author interviews that are being done to celebrate the Mystery Most Cozy group’s 10th anniversary.

Lastly, I am a guest today at Cozy Mystery Book Reviews with an article about "Mothers and the Daughters Who Leave Them," an important subplot in To Hell in a Handbasket. The review site is also posted their review of the book today. I hope you'll stop by and read both my article and the review!

To Hell in a Handbasket is widely available in bookstores (If it's not on the shelf, order it!), libraries, and from on-line retailers, including: Indie Bound, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and direct from the publisher, Midnight Ink. Do you have any mystery readers on your holiday gift list? This book, and the first in the series, A Real Basket Case, might be perfect for them. If you'd like signed bookplates or bookmarks to go with your gifts, contact me at my website, and I'll arrange to send them to you.

Bopping Around the Internet

As my regular blog readers know by now, I've got a new release due out on November 8th, the trade paperback and ebook edition of To Hell in a Handbasket with a phenomenal purple cover (see above). To celebrate and promote the release, I'm visiting various sites on the Internet, leaving articles or answering interview questions. Today, I'm on the Mysteries and Margaritas blog, with an article about "Researching How Colorado Sheriff Offices Work."

Last Friday, October 26th, the "Writing From the Peak" blog of Pikes Peak Writers spotlighted To Hell in a Handbasket in it's Sweet Success feature, where accomplishments of members are trumpeted.

And tomorrow is day two of my appearance on Agatha Award-winning author Leslie Budewitz's blog, Law and Fiction, where I'm talking about serving on a jury for three days. The article about my first day of jury service appeared on her blog on October 23rd. The third article, about my last day of service, will appear on Tuesday, November 6th.

More on-line appearances are coming up, and I'll try to keep you posted about them here. I hope those of you who haven't read To Hell in a Handbasket will get your hands on a copy and read it soon. I'd love to know what you think of it after you read it, too!

Lastly, for you whitewater enthusiasts, here's a great article on the OARS blog by George Wendt, an early river runner, about his exploits.

Going to Hell in a Handbasket

Today I am blogging at Inkspot, the Midnight Ink author blog, about the November 8th re-release in trade paperback and ebook of To Hell in a Handbasket, the second book in my Claire Hanover gift basket designer mystery series. I hope you will join me there--and enter the contest I'm having by making a comment and following the blog if you aren't already a follower!

Cover Art! Cover Art! Woot! Woot! Woot!

It seems like I was just doing this, back in October, when I posted the cover art for Wicked Eddies, my May 8th release. But, here I am again, with the cover art for the trade paperback and ebook re-release on November 8th of To Hell in a Handbasket. I'm especially pleased with this one, because purple is my favorite color! (What else would you expect from a Leo?)

So, what do you think? Please let me know.

Large Print Books

I received two nuggets of information about large-print versions of my books today. The first piece of news is that Thorndike Press will release a large-print version of Deadly Currents on July 27th. The Amazon preorder page for it is HERE. I'm glad that I can now give a definite date to readers who have been asking me when a large-print version will come out!

The second nugget of information was a terrific royalty statement (with a large check attached) summarizing the large-print sales of To Hell in a Handbasket in the last half of 2010. The Amazon page for that book format is HERE. I'm so very pleased by how well the large-print version has sold, which to me is an indication that libraries have gotten their hands on some book-buying money again. Libraries provide such a service to those readers who are vision-impaired by making large-print and audio book formats available to their patrons!

And this is a reminder to writers that the subsidiary rights (large-print, audio, foreign, etc.) for your books can be very valuable and should never be given away for nothing. This is where a good literary agent can help you.

Large-print Edition of To Hell in a Handbasket

The official release date of the large-print edition of the second book in my Claire Hanover gift basket designer mystery series, To Hell in a Handbasket, is Monday, October 6th. Amazon is taking preorders now. However, Barnes & Noble is already selling it outright, and at a significant discount! And, they have discounted the large-print edition of the first book, A Real Basket Case, too. So, if you are a large-print reader, or have one on your gift list, now is the time to order copies. If you would like signed bookplates to go with those purchases, please contact me at my website.

Two Tantilizing Placeholders

Every now and then, I type my name into Amazon's or Barnes and Noble's search box to see how sales are going on my existing titles (the hardcover and large-print editions of A Real Basket Case, To Hell in a Handbasket, and The Epsilon Eridani Alternative), even though they've all been out awhile and on-line sales have dropped off. I was gratified and surprised when two new listings showed up on Amazon.

The first is the large-print edition of To Hell in a Handbasket, which will be released on October 6, 2010 by Kennebec Large Print, a part of Cengage/Gale. Cengage/Gale is also the parent company of Five Star, the original hardcover publisher for the book. My author representative at Five Star had told me that she would look for a home for To Hell in a Handbasket in one of the Cengage/Gale large print lines, but she hadn't told me that she had succeeded. So, this was a really nice surprise!

The second new listing is for the first title in my new "RM Outdoor Adventures" mystery series with Midnight Ink, titled Deadly Currents, which will be released March 1, 2011. I was really surprised to see the placeholder for this title since the release date is so far off!

Now here's a special piece of trivia for my blog readers. What does the RM stand for? It stands for both "Rocky Mountain" and "Rob and Mandy." The sleuth in this series is a whitewater river ranger named Mandy Tanner, and her boyfriend is Rob. At the end of the first book, they form a joint adventure outfitting company in Salida, Colorado that will be called RM Outdoor Adventures. All of the books in the series will feature the logo for their company, designed by Midnight Ink's talented cover artists. I've seen a mock-up of the cover for Deadly Currents and am very excited about it and the logo brand for the series. I can't wait to show it to you all!

Another Sale on TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET

I just discovered that Amazon has discounted copies of my second Claire Hanover gift basket designer book, To Hell in a Handbasket, by a huge 41%, resulting in a price of $15.32 per hardcover copy. That's lower than my author discount! As I said before, I never know when they're going to put my books on sale or for how long, so please take advantage of this offer as soon as possible here. Claire's adventures in Breckenridge, Colorado, skiing, snowshoeing, and riding a snowmobile await you!

The first book in the series, set in Colorado Springs, Colorado and titled A Real Basket Case, is discounted 12% on Amazon, so you can get the two for a sweet price of $38.15 instead of for just under $52.

To Hell in a Handbasket is a Contest Finalist!

Recently I received one of those phone calls that every writer loves to get--a notification that my work is a finalist in a contest! I especially savored those calls when I was still unpublished because they validated that my writing was good enough to one day be published and that I should keep on plugging away at it. And now I savor them because they show that my writing stacks up well against that of my published peers. Plus there's the financial benefit of increased sales, usually. ;-)

This recent phone call from Lori Consentino of the Colorado Romance Writers was to tell me that my 2009 mystery book, To Hell in a Handbasket, is a finalist in the "Mainstream with Romantic Elements" category of the Colorado Romance Writers' Award of Excellence Contest. To see the full list of finalist titles in all the categories, go here. My book is in good company with titles from St. Martin's Press, Avon, Bantam, Harlequin, NAL - Signet, Pocket Books, Dorchester, Kensington and other well-known publishers. Wish me luck!

A Sale and An Appearance

I just discovered that Amazon has discounted my second Claire Hanover gift basket designer mystery, To Hell in a Handbasket, by 30%. I never know when they're going to put my books on sale or for how long, so if you've been waiting to find To Hell in a Handbasket priced at under $19, now's your chance! Go here.

Also, I will be appearing at the Colorado Independent Publisher's (CIPA) College in Denver this weekend. I will present a workshop on The Dos and Don'ts of Planning and Conducting a Virtual Book Tour Saturday at 2:40 PM, will be selling and signing copies of my books at Anne Randolph's Soup Kitchen Writing table, and will be available Friday afternoon and Saturday morning for one-on-one consultations. This is the first time I've attended this particular conference, and I'm very excited about it. It looks like they've lined up some wonderful speakers. To find out more and to register, go here.

A lovely review from a lovely reader!

Leola, who writes the "I Love to Read" book review blog, recently read my To Hell in a Handbasket mystery, the second in the Claire Hanover gift basket designer series. She decided that its winter sports focus, with skiing, snowshoeing, and snowmobiling scenes set in Breckenridge, CO, was a good fit with the ongoing winter Olympics. Apparently she really enjoyed the book, because she wrote a lovely, glowing review which you can read Here. Thanks so much, Leola!

Two Signings in Denver Coming Up

I am looking forward to two fun appearances coming up in Denver, Colorado next week. First, on Sunday, December 6th, from 3:00 – 4:00 PM, I will participate in a group signing with fellow mystery authors Mike Befeler, Linda Berry, and Patricia Stoltey at Who Else Books? in the Broadway Book Mall at 200 S. Broadway. We call ourselves the "Mystery Through the Ages" panel, with mysteries featuring sleuths of all different ages.

Second, on Friday, December 11th, I will participate with a host of other authors in a fundraiser for the Colorado Humanities and Colorado Center for the Book at the Barnes & Noble Bookstore in the Entertainment and Fashion Pavilion at 500 16 Street. I will be signing with science fiction author Laura Reeve from 11:00 AM to noon. For more information about this event and to download a voucher that assures a percentage of your purchases goes to the fundraiser, go to the Colorado Humanities website.

I hope to see some of my Colorado-based friends, family, and fans, and fellow mystery writers and readers at these events. I'm sure you all have a mystery lover on your gift list, and what better gift could there be for such a person than a signed first-edition hardcover mystery from yours truly? ;-)