Tomorrow Thirteen Fourteen Maids a-Courting sidles into the family—sidles, because it only officially joins the gang on May 1^st. There was a time when I was truly organized, and had interview launches in blogs much more widely read than this one, and begged my beta readers to give me reviews (good or, gulp, bad). When I asked people buying at the introductory price to please spread the word. When I even sacrificed one of the earlier books as a freebie to whip up excitement in the series as a whole.

You can of course only do that so many times before you exhaust all your options and become too shy to ask again. I’m no longer remotely organized, and when Eleven Twelve scrambled aboard in breathless haste, making its vital Halloween date by the skin of its fangs, it did so with hardly any launch help at all. It had to make its own friends (and enemies, sadly, but it was controversial, and although I titled it appropriately, and put a warning in the Amazon blurb, and even in the book itself, I managed to shock and upset a couple of readers) with very little support from me. I am rubbish at marketing. My skills boil down to a blog or two, offering a lower price for a few days, and intermittent tweets.  Oh, and crossing my fingers.

That may be about to change at some time, as I’ve heard about a cooperative indies group which combines publishing forces. Some indies could sell bibles to atheists. Some can edit, some can illustrate, and some are a fund of good advice and experience. Gathering a good group, where the members take on each other’s books and burnish them to a brilliant shine, then work together to market them, is probably the only way to survive and grow in a flood of millions (literally millions) of books where the best are often unrecognized, the worst give us all a bad name, and some diamonds in the rough never get to shine as they could.

I’m not being coy about the name of the group, just cautious: I want to find out more before I start wholesale recommendations. I’ve heard they are extremely picky about the books they take on which sounds both promising and, of course, alarming. Perfect world, I’d want them to consider one of my books (which are brilliant) as a borderline decision, because their portfolio is that good.

Until then, I’m still paddling the indie canoe, telling you that you really, really want to buy Thirteen Fourteen and you can pre-order tonight at promotion price, buy it from tomorrow on promotion price, or wait until it goes to the usually tooth-rattling full price on May 1^st. It is sunny, and cheerful, and mostly far from Scotland, set as it is in Tenerife: back to cosy, while still being true to our rather alarming world: and fun. Trust me. Gamble your 99c. Pack your sun-cream. Go on holiday.

Just click on the cover.