I'm digital!

Several of my books from the sadly-now-gone Harlequin Next line of women's fiction have been released as e-books this week and I'm absolutely delighted. I'm delighted because I love these books and I was sorry they were no longer available. I'm delighted because I love the covers of all of them (I used the cover of Awakening in my Wednesday post this week as an indication of how beautiful cover art can be). And I'm delighted because now you can have them on your Kindle or your Sony or your iPad or whatever digital device you choose.

And even more, I'm delighted because they're no longer lost in the dusty library where no longer in print books languish.

Four books were released this week (I've set out the links below if you're interested): Awakening, Last Night at the Halfmoon, The Gossip Queens, and a novella - If I Make it Through December - in the book Holiday Wishes.

My first two books for Next - Dragonflies and Dinosaurs and The Sunshine Coast News aren't yet available digitally, but I've got my fingers crossed that they will be soon.

Kate

Awakening

The Gossip Queens

Last Night at the Halfmoon

Holiday Wishes

The Gossip Queens AND Holiday Wishes

It feels kind of weird but good to have two books out back to back. I'm pretty sure I didn't realize this would happen when I got the dates for The Gossip Queens and Holiday Wishes way back when.

The trouble is that when you're working on more than one book at a time - writing, revising, promoting - you kind of lose track of when things are going to happen. Or at least I do. I think it's because of the way my mind works.

I tend to concentrate on the task at hand - right now I'm finishing up Seeing Death and that's my task for the next few days. Then I'll send it off to my agent and I'll forget about it. After that, I have to do the revisions for Last Night at the Halfmoon. That's my task for the few days after Seeing Death is finished. Once both those things are done, I'm going to spend some time doing promotion, sending out books, doing mailings, writing some promotional material - that's another short term task.

I do have a vague idea of what I'm going to do after those things are completed - I'm going to work on The Twisted Sisters - but that's far enough in the future that it really is kind of hazy and distant. And after that? Please. I have absolutely no idea. I suspect, though, that my agent does.

My focus tends to be very intense and probably a little too short term - this week, maybe a part of the next; this task, maybe the one following. I do look at my calendar to see what's coming up, but I'm not a person who has a list of what I have to do for the week. And I certainly don't have a list of the things I need to do for the year. And I probably should.

But what this means is that occasionally - like this month - I get a surprise. And what a lovely surprise - two books on the shelves at once. Maybe having the short term, intense focus is a good thing - at least this time.

Kate

Holiday Wishes

I've just got the cover for my first novella - it's in Holiday Wishes with Stevi Mittman (www.stevimittman.com) and Mary Schramski (www.maryschramski.com) and my novella is called "If I Make it Through December". The title is a play on one of my favorite Christmas songs ever.

Written by Merle Haggard and covered by Holly Cole on my favorite Christmas CD Baby It's Cold Outside - this tune is not your regular happy holidays kind of song. It's definitely blues and it's about a couple who may or may not make it through December as a couple. I play Holly's CD almost every day it from the beginning of December right through to January to remind me to relax and enjoy myself in the midst of the holiday chaos.

The novella was so much fun to write - something completely different for me. I've written 10 novels, a couple of hundred short stories, but I'd never before ventured into that length of a story before. I enjoyed writing it so much that I'm writing another one called "Summertime Blues" for another anthology that's going to come out in August of 2007.

Another song title - and my character, Ardella Simpson, wonders whether for her if there ain't no cure for the summertime blues.

Kate