witchcraft

I was up until 03h00 waiting for Amazon to load the new book so I could make some capital out of it being, you know, Halloween. Since I was publishing a book sub-titled, you know, the Halloween edition.

Well, the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley and it only published at 08h30 this morning. Pretty sure Halloween was over for 2014 everywhere in the world by then, so that’s a lesson learned and the first and last time I try to publish on a ‘celebrity’ date. Although Three Four was published on April Fools Day, now that I think back, but perhaps there isn’t such a rush to publish on 1st April.

Anyway, here it is. For the thousands upon thousands of you who like to grab my books in their first few days, when they’re on promotion price. Don’t come whining to me if there are oddities and glitches, that’s why they are cheap for the first few days. It used to be because I hoped to get a few friendly reviews before the new book soared to its teeth-rattling full price but that hasn’t been happening much lately. I know, I know. Those of you that do reviews have done some already, and don’t see why I need one on every single book.

WOW, am I crotchety. Blame Amazon and the 03h00 bedtime. Blame the cat for waking me at 06h30 by bringing a live bird into the bedroom. Blame the bird for being so paranoid it was 07h30 before it finally decided the window was open to the full for its benefit and not because I wanted howling Scottish gales roaring through the house.

If wishes were horses that cat’s tail would have been stood upon pretty heavily by now.

For the last four months Eleven Twelve (the Halloween edition) has been dominating my life. The finished version is a long way from the first final draft which went to my long-suffering alpha readers who both said um, NO.

Oh.

They both said (and they don’t usually agree on anything) was that their main concern is that the book steps right out of the established series, and they couldn’t see how I could get back to finishing the series in its usual comfortable format afterwards.

The only way round that was to publish it as a Halloween edition. That solved that problem, and cheered the alpha readers up, but created a fairly considerable new one—Halloween was only six weeks away, the book still had to be beta read, pulled into final shape, edited, tweaked a little more, it wasn’t possible. On the other hand, since I write novellas, and pop one out two to three times a year, waiting for Halloween 2015 wasn’t really an option either.

Five of my wonderful beta readers stepped up to the plate at short notice. I recruited three new absolute crackers, one of them a powerhouse from ALLi (no pressure there, then), and two lovely series regulars said they’d be interested in beta-reading. My editor promised me a time-slot on 20^th October and suddenly we were green for go.

Long story short: it’s done. Loaded, minutes before the witching hour —hah, because Eleven Twelve has witches, and chapter headings from Macbeth, and is a definite eye-opener for Edge and co. It was riotous fun to write and some readers will love it, and some will probably disapprove completely. The beta readers all finished it, and all had strong, ultimately positive, feedback, which was wonderful. Anyway, as soon as I have the published link I will start pushing it like crazy. This is just a brief blog to say this is one major reason I have been virtually invisible for months, and I am so looking forward to resuming normal life from tomorrow.

Oh, and the series returns to normal with the next book. Promise.