Book Promotions for September

 I love book promotions because they're always a great way to grab a bunch of new books at once. Sometimes you have to enter your email address, sometimes you can just snag them. As a writer, looking at promotions is a fabulous way to see who else is writing the kinds of books you're writing. It's a chance to evaluate your cover next to the other covers out there. I like to study blurbs and keywords to make sure I can maximize my own work. But basically, I just really like getting books.  Some of these book promotions feature books that are pruced $2.99 and lower. Find them here.

Here's another promo that's more focused on sci fi.  I'm writing a sci fi novella for Aliens on Earth this year and am excited to see the books in this one. 

Sespite the banner, the books here are an eclectic mix of genres, from straight up sci fi, space opera, fantasy, epic fantasy, and beyon. You can browse through them here.

And finally, here's a promo of books that are all action/all the time. I am particularly drawn to the apocalyptic Los Angeles ones. I love L.A., I truly do, but it's the kind of city where you expect an apocalypse to start. Check the books out here.

Kleopatra with a K

 

Kleopatra by Karen Essex is the first in a series of juicy historical novels giving us a new take on everybody's favorite Egyptian queen. This one focuses on the child who became that queen and she lives in such a treacherous world that it's a wonder she made it to adulthood. The story opens with the death of Ptolemy's wife--even a blind Armenian healer cannot prolong his life--and three-year-old Kleopatra sitting vigil with her sister and half-sister. The little girl is her father's favorite--he calls her his "piece of joy"--and up until this moment, her life has been charmed. But the queen's death is going to unleash a bitter contest for his empty throne, with the other contenders playing ruthlessly. 

This first book has everyting a reader could want--history, pageantry, sex, betrayal, great characters. The only thing its missing is dragons. (And you won't miss them.) Kleoatra's time was so far in the past that even the ordinary feels magical. This is an extremely satisfying book.

It's almost autumn

 

Fall is my favorite season. Summer is nice but Fall has it all. Stephen King's birthday (Next Wednesday, the King will be 75). Halloween. Thanksgiving. Most of the run-up to the winter holidays. I grew up in Washington DC where the autumn color is pretty nice, but my paternal grandmother lived near the Blue Ridge Highway and Skyline Drive, which is one of the premiere places to find Fall color. Lately, the foliage hasn't been quite as spectacular because ofthe droughts everywhere but it can be glorious. The Pacific Northwest, where I lived for five years, does Fall even more spectacularly. In Bellingham, in a little plaza right beside my grocery store, was a trio of trees, one golden, one scarlet, and one brilliant orange. They were spectacular. This is a picture from Deposit Photos but there was a park near where I lived where the trees looked just like this. 

Vote as if your life depends on it, because it does...

 I don't make a secret of my politics. Bu telling you to register to vote has nothing to do with who I vote for. It's one of the duties of being a citizen. The country doesn't ask much of you. Occasionally you might be summoned for jury duty. And every so often, they ask you to vote. If you aren't registered, visit this site. The mid-terms are important. The presidential election is important. The city council elections in your home town are important. VOTE!

I am cheered to see that celebrity influencers are geting involved too. Normally I just roll my eyes when I see a TikTok star or an Instagram influencer talking politic. But the lousy turnout of millennials shows that the regular messages are reaching them. So pieces like this are welcome:  https://youtu.be/V2cYnsYqlZE

I love book covers and I cannot lie

 One of my favorite things about being an indie author (and I've been traditionally published) is hat you have control over what your cover looks like. In trad publishing, even heavyweights like King and Patteson don't have that much say. But as an indie, you can have exactly the cover you want. (That doesn't prevent a lot of indie covers from being awful, but you could say that about a fair number of trad published books as well.)

A cover will make me want to pick up a book. The cover of Mexican Gothic, for example, is so beautiful it looks like a piece of art I want to put on my bookshelf facing out. (It's a wonderful book, but that cover is what snaggedme.) If ou haven't seen it, I urge you to look it up. I couldn't post the cover because it's protected by copyright, and I couldn't. 

When I started publishing 11 years ago, you could buy a lot of covers for under $50.  There were a couple of designers who specialized in inexpensive covers. They all used the same photo sources--Deposit Photo, Shutter Stock, Dreamstime--so you started to see the same faces over and over. (I have the same model on several books. His name is Gunther, and his images are up at a site called Period Images. Another of their models, Karl, is on a couple other books. 

Prices have gone up, but you can still snag some bargains if you cruise the sites. The one I use most often is Book Cover Design. They have tons of designs and one of the things I like about them is that they don't accept covers that use AI-generated images. I've seen a lot of posts touting how writers can make their own covers quickly and freely using sites dedicated tojust that. Right now, honestly, they mostly look awful but in a few months, who knows? (This is different from covers using characters that designers have patiently created on their own.) But the way AI images are created involves a kind of "sampling" from other images, that are the property of the designers who created them. In other words, depending on how you look at it, it's sketchy or it's stealing.  

Designers have to make a living too. Both my mother and my sister were artists. They made a living from their commercial art (working for department stores and thelike). I would hate to think that someone was stealing their art. (Piray of books is also a huge issue. I've seen my work on pirate sites. A lot of people say, well--I don't have the money to buy your book. Except, they're mostly all on KU, so you could spent $10 and get thousands of books for free. And don't tell me you don't spend at least ten dollars a month buying fancy coffee.Onw of my books has been downloaded so much that if I actually got royalties, I could actually cover my monthly expenses with my writing.) But I digress. We were talking about covers.

I have stockpiled a lot of covers, which turned out to be a good investment when prices started going up. A lot of designers I bought when they were just starting out are now in the $200-$300 range per cover. But there is one drawback. Styles in covers change and what looked like an awesome cover back in the day looks hopelessly dated now. Or you bought covers for a series you planned and now find yourself writing in another direction. (I have a number of covers for horror stories and I don't really write those that often.)

Man Chest Ahead...but my story is sweet

 I write a lot under the pen name Katherine Moore. "She" is my most successful pseudonym and the one with the best accolades. (I worked hard to get that USAT bestselling author, yes, I'm goig nto mention it often.) Her brand is sweet, cozy, feel good stories and while I'll occasionally get a little spicy (and it's very little), I mostly stay in the Hallmark zone, if you know what I mean.

But I also contribute to a lot of anthologies and in general, the covers are geared to an audience that's looking for more heat. I often feel like "which story is not like the others?"  But the thing is, I don't really read the sexier stuff. I'm not a prude--sex is awesome in movies--but when I read it, it often sounds really clinical and I get distracted by the words. Rod, shaft, manhood, cock.  Or pussy, cunt, mound, vagina.  It's not that I want to say "thing" and "ya-ya" but I'd rather take you up to the bedroom door so you can imagine what happens then.

Which brings me back to those covers. Basically, if you see I'm in an anthology with a Man Chest cover, it means that I've been invited to play along even though my story isn't as sexy as my fellow writers' fiction. If you like your romance across the spectrum, you will be a happy reader. (As Kat Parrish, I have done some Man Chest--the Rezso novels are sexier.)

A different kind of shifter

 I admit it, werewolves (or as they're known in PNR. wolf-shifters) kind of bore me. I just think there are way more interesting creatures to shift into. (Do not get me started on those books about peacock shifters and raven shifters. It defies credulity that a fully grown adult can shift into a three-pound bird or a house cat or anything that weighs less than a hundred pounds.)

So when I write about shifters, they're likely to be somthing else. I have a whole series of books spotlighting women who shift into a tiger, a lion, and a snow leopard. The tiger story is called "A Tiger's Heart" and it's included in this anthology, Shifter Time. You might enjoy it. The title is taken from a Shakespeare play because I love Shakespeare and look for any opportunity to use it. It comes from Macbeth, one of my favorite plays despite its cursed reputation. It's a description of Lady Macbeth, who has a tiger's heart "wrapped in woman's hide."