P.J. Fox's Blog, page 11

Mail Bag #9: On World Travelers and Hair

I received three questions this week.  The first concerns my hair, while the second concerns my life experiences and the perspective they’ve helped to create.  The third is writing related: what, exactly, does a beta reader do?  I’m going to answer these in order, now, starting with the first.

Is there any special significance to the color of your hair?

No, other than that it signifies my love of green.  Plus, I have green eyes, so it goes.  When I color my hair, which is frequently, I tend to avoid pinks and purples and pretty much anything else on the warm spectrum as I’m definitely a “cool tones” palette kind of girl.  Because I’m so pale, and kind of have that Grow-A-Frog thing going on, reds make my skin look, well…red.  And not in a fun, sexy way.  But honestly, while there are a lot of things I take seriously in this life, my hair isn’t one of them.

Where do you live?  Where do you find your fabulous pictures [on Facebook]?  Have you been to Europe?

I live near the subjects of most of my pictures.  Which is very convenient, as I’m quite lazy.  But no, really, I live north of Boston in a part of Massachusetts famed for both its history and its beauty.  I take most of the pictures I post on Facebook myself.  Some, my husband takes on our various excursions.  The Crane Estate, Hammond Castle, farms, open fields, and numerous beaches are all around us.  I like to get out there and look around.

I’m also a short–or short-ish, at least–drive from Cambridge/Boston and all the things of interest there.  I started exploring Mt. Auburn Cemetery, and other, more off the beaten path landmarks, in college.  I used to take nature walks in the cemetery, which is a) huge and b) also a famous arboretum.  It was designed by Henry Alexander Scammell Dearborn after the style of Fredrick Law Olmstead’s most famous project, Central Park.  Olmstead who, incidentally, also designed our house.

The pictures from Sweden were mostly taken by my husband, while he was living there and attending Lund University, one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious universities (that indeed traces its roots back to the middle ages).  We have, indeed, both traveled overseas.  For those who are interested, there’s a certain element of biography in both The Price of Desire and The Prince’s Slave and that includes a girl from nowhere marrying someone much more exciting–and pretty quickly, too!  We’re two people who hail from completely different backgrounds and who had, and continue to have, a lot to teach each other.  And who still find each other equally as fascinating, if not more, ten years later as we did the day we met.

My own study of medieval history has been greatly advanced by visiting the places I’d first read about, both in England and in France (and elsewhere, too, but mainly there) and getting a sense of scale.  A very few things are much larger than one thinks but most are much, much smaller.  It’s helped me, too, whether walking streets or climbing crumbling parapets, to create new places (like Barghast) in my mind that still–at least to me–feel real.

The rest of my pictures are either sent to me, or they’re images I find when researching specific places.

My childhood was…not pleasant.  If I have an unusual perspective, it’s because I’ve–and whether this is a good thing, or a bad thing, is open to interpretation and I think changes based on circumstance–experienced a few things that other people haven’t.  And, therapy (which I’ve had) aside, I’ve dealt with most of it through writing.  I don’t talk about horrible things to glamorize them but, rather, to exorcise the demons they’ve left behind and their hold over me.  Nothing’s a one to one comparison and my books aren’t biographies, but if one comes the closest to being “real,” as it were, it’s The Prince’s Slave.

What is a beta reader, precisely?

Well, the answer to this question is going to depend on the author.  But here’s mine.  A beta reader is just that…a reader.  Not an editor, not a proofreader.  Just someone who reads the book, like they would any other, and gives feedback on the story itself.  What they thought of the plot, what they thought of certain characters.  What mysteries they feel the plot created, that they’re anxious to see answered.  That sort of thing.

People ask other people to be beta readers for a lot of different reasons.  In my particular case, I wanted a couple of–reasonably disinterested–third parties to tell me what they thought of how The Black Prince Trilogy, as a series, was developing.

So that’s it, folks: the latest word in storyville.

What’s new with you?

It’s DONE.

Part I of The Black Prince is done, all fifty-eight chapters.  Now, after I take my son to visit the cows (again), it’s on to Part II.  I’m also working on the responses to another Q and A (if you didn’t get to ask your question on Facebook and want to, there’s still time, drop it in the comments), and on some other exciting Black Prince Trilogy-related news as well.  So stay tuned for more information, coming shortly!

The Black Prince Update 5

Yesterday, I ended the day with 101,583 words written on The Black Prince.  Putting that number in perspective, The Demon of Darkling Reach is 139,223 words and The White Queen is 137,446.  After I finish Part I, which I hope will happen in the next couple of weeks, it’s on, then to Part II.  Now, why am I splitting this into two parts?  Because an almost 300,000 word book is very long and, because of that, very expensive–and difficult–to print.  The paperback would end up costing as much as one of my old college textbooks.  When I began writing TDODR, I didn’t picture it as a trilogy–I pictured it as one stand alone book!  Some stories just take longer to tell than you think they will.  So, here, too, it’s not an issue of packing more things in since the series has been successful but of realizing, as I finished TWQ, that I’d only said a fraction of what I wanted to say.  I’ve had the entire series in my head from the beginning; it’s just been an issue of how to transmit it, most effectively, to paper.

As for timing, until I’ve actually finished a manuscript, I can’t commit to an actual date.  To a deadline, yes; I can say, Part I will be finished by Halloween.  But by the end of September?  Too much is still up in the air.  Because, as I’ve discovered, you can predict how hard you’ll work but not necessarily how much you’ll get accomplished.  Which is why, while I know when I’d like to have Part II completed, and hopefully ahead of when I’d initially thought, I can’t say for sure that anything will be coming out early.  Only tell you that this is my hope.

I have beta readers for the first time so, after I finish Part I, it’ll go to them.

In the meantime, if you like this series, tell people about it!  Share my Facebook author page.  Share links to the book.  Consider writing a review on Amazon or Goodreads.  These things all really help.  More than people realize.  Exposure is the hardest thing to achieve, and the one area where, at the end of the day, despite all of an author’s hard work she (or he) is ultimately reliant on others for help.

Want Spam?

Comments that get marked as spam, apart from the obvious (i.e. attempts to sell me a “Gucci” handbag), include the following: personal attacks, requests for artistic validation (you can claim you wrote something or, indeed, that you’re Batman and you may well be but I can’t prove it so I won’t endorse it), and/or interpretations of the Bible that promote homophobic, transphobic, or racist political agendas.  If you need a platform for these things, well, the First Amendment gives you that right.  But I don’t have to.  You have the whole internet to spout off in; create your own website.

Thank you for understanding.

Five Kinds of Reviews You Find on Amazon

When I was a newbie author, pacing back and forth the day The Demon of Darkling Reach was released and wondering if it’d ever sell a copy, I took reviews a lot more seriously.  I hadn’t yet learned that, as Chuck Wendig explains, reviews are more about volume than content.  People, by and large, want to read something that someone else has read–not necessarily liked.  When I did get reviews, and they were bad, I took them to heart.  I thought each bad review spelled the end of my writing career, killing my dreams before they’d even had a chance to take flight.  I was very dramatic.

Fast forward awhile and I’ve developed a thicker skin and a sense of humor, both because the passage of time works wonders and because, as I’ve experienced the ups and downs of life as a full time, professional author, I’ve gained some insight.  So, with this terrible introduction in mind, I present to you the five kinds of reviews (and reviewers) you’ll find on Amazon and, too, on that infamous troll cave known as Goodreads.

The pure troll.  This group, often as not, includes people you know.  When The Price of Desire came out, it–or, should I say, I–got one star reviews from such literary experts as a man I’d rejected by explaining that I was married, and my former sister in law.  Pure trolls also include anyone who has a grudge against authors who, in their minds, shouldn’t be authors (for example, the entire Sad Puppies/Rabid Puppies cadre versus women of color), or against the inclusion of said characters in books.  Another example being that several people felt the need to point out that there were people of color and non-Christians in there.  The horror.  These people don’t have anything intelligent to say about the book, itself; they’re planting flags so that other, similarly minded people can also avoid anything that might, you know, cause them to use their minds.  And then, of course, the world can finally realize how smart the reviewer is.
The frustrated would-be author who thinks she knows better than everyone else and has something to prove.  This category could also be referred to as self-hating Twilight enthusiasts.  Because, you know, they all compare  The Demon of Darkling Reach to Twilight .  In a way that means us to understand that they’re insulting it.  Now, their collective mastery of all the series’ finer points leads me to believe that this group is composed of people who’ve read the series through at least once.  A series that comes to mind, to them, when they’re talking about an entirely different book.  So no, I’m not in the least discouraged by the comparison.  And would now be a good time to point out that I loved the series, myself?  Even though The Demon of Darkling Reach is decidedly for those who’d rather have an affair with Dracula than Edward Cullen.  I also don’t understand why, just as a general principle, comparing someone’s series to one of the most beloved series of all time is meant to be an insult.  Except wait, I do: for this group, better than is how they define themselves.  Because, much like Lady Catherine de Bourgh, they should have been virtuosos had they ever learned.  They compensate, in the meantime, for the fact that they haven’t yet produced any books among them by attacking those who have.  So that, when their book finally comes out, their intended audience will be primed and waiting.
“I don’t know how to feel about this.”  I get this comment a lot, particularly on my more challenging reads.  Yes, it’s literature, not the back of a cereal box.  I tackle subjects like death, dishonesty, and child abuse.  Because I do, though, doesn’t mean I’m endorsing these activities.  As is rather obvious from context.  The same people who talk about how Belle’s quest for autonomy isn’t “sexy” also castigate me for writing about the international sex slave trade.  Seemingly missing the fact that Belle having a miserable time is my commentary on the evils of exploiting women.  Not to mention, there’s a whole essay in the back of the book on why I chose to set a modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast in this environment, and how his involvement makes Ash–at least initially–a beast.  But why, you know, actually pay attention when you can have a platform?  Which leads me to…
Feminist warriors.  Who, ironically, tend to go hardest on books focusing on a woman’s point of view.  Because it’s not the “right” point of view, or they find all that politics boring.  Like a recent reader of The Price of Desire , who by her own admission “skipped over” the “political mumbo jumbo,” i.e. discussions of the role of women in society, finding it unromantic, but then took to Amazon because “I rarely write reviews but I’m all upset now.”  Because cheating was a trigger for her and she felt like there was “a man telling a woman he loves her but constantly having sex with other women.”  Which, while I can empathize with triggers, is missing the point.  Kisten and Aria are in a polyamorous relationship.  Kisten has sex with other women and, indeed, has a secondary romantic partner.  All with Aria’s knowledge and consent.  Which readers might, you know, understand a little better if they didn’t skip large chunks of the book.  Skim from sex scene to sex scene and feel aggrieved that you don’t understand the context and…I don’t know what to tell you.  Except look: if you’re going to be a feminist, then be a feminist.  A real one.  Acknowledge that there’s no “right” way to be a woman, or to feel sexually or emotionally fulfilled, and feminism is all about escaping the idea that there is in the first place.  Don’t claim you’re so “feminist” and then go disempowering women, real and imagined, by projecting preconceived notions of how to be a woman onto them.  Aria is my most feminist character by far, not because she adheres to June Cleaver-esque notions about defining and limiting her sexuality but because she consistently chooses what’s right for her.  Including a relationship her parents wouldn’t understand, but that makes her feel good about herself.
People who actually read the book for pleasure and either enjoyed it, or didn’t.  This is, in a surprising number of cases, depending on the book and the author, the smallest group.  Because it’s composed of the busiest people, I think.  Those whose interest in the book begins and ends with reading it and, maybe, its sequel.  Once a book, or series, gains a real following, then you start to see positive reviews; but for every positive review I think I have to sell between one and 5,000 copies.  Less now, that people are buying the book in question because their friend recommended it, or it was assigned to their book group, or they follow me on Facebook rather than cold off the shelf.

For authors wishing they had more reviews, what helps?  Time, I think.  Book sales.  Check out one of your favorite YouTuber’s videos sometime, and contrast the total view count with the number of thumbs up.  Chances are, the latter is a tiny fraction of the former.  Most people don’t interact and how many do, in the end, is really just going to be a reflection of overall sales.  Which, in time, lead to developing a reputation and to people buying your book because it’s your book and because they’re more familiar with the genre/s represented, writing style, etc.

Sometimes early reviews, I’ve come to realize, are really just shots in the dark.  It can take awhile for authors and prospective readers to find the right fit.  So, for that reason alone, try not to take the “I thought this book was going to be x but it wasn’t x and now I’m upset”-type reviews too seriously.  That your book turns out to be someone’s ugly duckling doesn’t mean that, to someone else, it’s not a swan.

For readers, your opinions–positive and negative–really do matter.  Which isn’t to say that you should hold back, or worry about stepping on anyone’s toes.  Although the next time anyone out there is thinking of sending (another) email, or Facebook message, wishing harm on me or my family because you don’t agree with my perceived politics (or race, or religion), it might be helpful to remember that there is indeed a real, live human being on the other end of the computer.  Writers are people, just like you, waking up every morning to do a job, just like you.

So, world of the internet, thoughts?

What did I miss?

 

Review: The Demon of Darkling Reach

I was privileged to receive a wonderful review yesterday for The Demon of Darkling Reach.  A friend observed that since I was so happy about it, that probably meant that my work had been appreciated as I’d intended it to be appreciated.  Which, as I consider the issue, is true.  It’s tremendously gratifying whenever someone actually appreciates that my book is intelligent, rather than viewing everything that isn’t torrid sex and incoherent sighing as drivel that just needs to be cut out.  Yes, I wrote a dark, gothic novel on purpose.  Yes, the explanations of Isla’s world, and of what Isla, herself, is thinking are there on purpose.  Things were different, and yet not so different, and as the review points out, “the same personal issues transcend the ages.”

I try not to read my own reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, etc because it’s horrendously difficult not to come down with a case of “the internet is wrong.”  Occasionally I do, though, and respond with a post like this.  It’s especially encouraging, though, to get some positive feedback–and people forget that this is equally important, whether you have no books under your belt or fourteen–as my deadline looms on The Black Prince.  All these Halloween countdowns appearing all over Facebook are very helpful, as they serve as constant reminders of how much time I have left!

You should check out the review (because really, it’s wonderful) and also give the blog’s Facebook page some love.  Inexplicably, some of the best Facebook pages have the fewest followers!  Which was mine for a long time so I have to ask myself, is my page now awful…?  Lisa, the mind behind the magic at Segnalibro, reviews a number of terrific books so it’s a good thing to follow if, like me, your bedside pile occasionally dwindles and you’re wondering what to read next.  And remember, as both writers and readers, it’s incredibly important to support those who support the art.

Indie: Deadline Free?

Last year, when I was working on The Prince’s Slave, someone I was friends with at the time asked if I wanted to have lunch.  I told her I was pretty busy but, seeing as how I’d turned her down a couple of times before, I agreed to meet.  At lunch she asked me: since I was working for myself, why did I have deadlines?  Weren’t they, like, not really real?  What was the point?

How to answer this question without going all Peter Griffin versus the chicken is a dilemma I think all self-employed people face.  Well, you feel like saying, because it’s my job.  Do things work out great for you when you don’t bother to show up at your job?  But of course you can’t say this.  Because it’s rude and because most self-appointed career experts don’t have any kind of employment to speak of.  Just like most experts on how to be a successful author have never published a book, let alone sold a copy.

Never take advice from anyone you don’t want to be more like, and all that.

As I’m approaching another deadline, with The Black Prince, I’ve had cause to recall this conversation.  And to think about the fact that it’s illuminating in that, in a few short words, it encapsulates the precise reason why so many self-employed people do terribly and why so many businesses fail.  You have to work, to succeed.  And whether you have an employer overseeing you or not, you have to accept the fact that the sole responsibility for your success lies with you.  If the only reason you’re setting, or meeting, deadlines is because someone is standing over you with a whip, then you’re never going to succeed.  And if the only deadlines in your life are those set for you by others then, again, you’re never going to succeed.

The drive to succeed has to come from within.  As trite as that might sound, it’s true.  Especially when it comes to writing.  Waiting for external validation in the arts is like waiting for Godot.

I set deadlines because this is my job.  If I want to sell books, then first I have to write them.  I can’t guarantee that each will be a bestseller–I’m not at the point yet where I can literally vomit on the page and reach #1 because I’m just that special–but I can guarantee that my books won’t sell if they’re not on the shelves to be purchased.

Some people are, mysteriously, under the impression that being self-employed means having a certain kind of freedom.  To, I dunno, jet around on waterskis or something while gnomes mint coins in the basement.  They don’t understand that there’s freedom, alright: to work twice as hard as your traditionally employed counterparts.

However you’re published, when your income is based on royalties, productivity is key.  And that means discipline.  And that means deadlines.  I imagine it’s the same thing if you’re one of those people making a million dollars a year on Etsy selling cat scarves.  All the demand in the world isn’t going to help you if there’s no supply.  And, with no supply…well, eventually people move on to something else.  They aren’t going to sit around, bored, waiting for you forever.

Thoughts?

On Pigs, Sunscreen, and Bad Words

One of my goals in creating the world of The Black Prince Trilogy was to challenge commonly held notions about the middle ages; so much of what we think we know about that time, and its inhabitants, is wrong.  I have a degree in medieval history from one of the finest educational institutions in the world and achieving that degree was, rather than what got me interested in the subject, the culmination of a lifetime’s worth of interest.  I have, in essence, been studying the middle ages since I was a child.

On reflection, I think part of what’s always captivated me so much is the same thing that captivates so many: how things were so different and yet, so much the same.  So much of our forebears’ lives would seem normal to us.  And so much, at the same time, horrifying.  There can be, at times, almost a post-apocalyptic feel to a world where people compose love poems and argue politics amid rivers–literal rivers–of raw sewage.  Skits skewering the president, ladies’ magazines, even Twilight all had their analogs.  And yet, even as people were standing in line at the perfume shop checking their horoscopes, their neighbors were being burned as witches.

A strange time, a frightening time, but a relatable time.  And a time when people absolutely knew that pigs used mud for sunscreen and told each other to go fuck themselves because these aspects of life were heritages of Roman times.  The word fuck, as a slang term originates with the Roman Republic and pigs have been domesticated for at least 9,000 years.  And yes, I did read a study conducted at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, on the history of the pig as a domesticated animal before introducing a pig as a character.  

Let’s take the first one first: people didn’t walk around declaiming in ye olde renaissance faire-style English.  English as we know it didn’t exist at all and much of what we think of as “old English” is a heritage of that fact and dates from the 1600’s anyway.  People talked then the same way we talk now: simply, and with purpose.  That older writings contain certain anachronisms isn’t a heritage of people somehow having been more stuffy and formal back then but rather stands as testament to our ever-evolving language.  Case in point: the progressive tense.  The King James Bible, written several hundred years after the time period this book is meant to represent, was translated into English at a time when “modern English” was still really becoming a thing.  And, like in German today, in English at that time there was no progressive tense.

via antimoon.com

“He doth go” wasn’t people being fancy, any more than it’s people being fancy in other germanic languages today.  But people were speaking Anglo-Norman, Occitan, Latin and Arabic, anyway.  And this is where, as a writer, you really have to ask yourself what your goal is: to write a book in Anglo-Norman or to write a book that people can read?

I tend to think of my modern English as a translation; just like one of my favorite novels, Der Schwarm, was translated from German into English.  But one term that needs no translation is everyone’s favorite: fuck you.

Back in the good old days when the senate ruled the republic, people used to get together underneath the arches supporting Rome’s famous aqueducts.  To score drugs and to score with each other.  Because underpasses are good places for criminal enterprise.  You know, same as now.  The word for arch, in Latin, is fornix.  As in, to fornicate.  To do it under the arches.  Literally, in Latin, to arch.

“Arching” became a verb the way fucking became a verb: an outgrowth of some really rude slang.  And, actually, they’re the same verb, just with different spellings and pronunciations.  But they mean the same thing, and come from the same place, and, indeed, started out as the same word.

“Fuck you” is pretty common graffiti throughout Rome.  Along with suggestions that so-and-so go fuck his mother, or his brother, or his pig.  And Romans knew that pigs wore sunscreen.

A great many things were, certainly by the high middle ages but in many cases much earlier, understood if imperfectly through observation.  A world that was governed by Hippocrates’ theory of humors also understood that pregnant women needed a diet rich in folic acid to prevent birth defects.  They didn’t know the term folic acid, of course; what they knew was that certain foods, like asparagus, were necessary to health.  Because, according to medieval physicians, it was shaped like a penis and foods shaped like penises gave women strength to combat birth defects because, since Mesopotamian times, the penis has been a mystical symbol of strength.

Asparagus is high in folic acid.

The ancient Egyptians used extracts of rice, jasmine, and lupine in their sunscreens; the ancient Greeks used olive oil.  Zinc oxide was well known as a sun protectant to the Crusaders.  People didn’t know why the sun was harmful, but they knew that it was.

They also knew what skin cancer was, and what breast cancer was, and what a whole host of other things were that might surprise you.  And, of course, how much one knew depended on how educated one was and where one had traveled.  The church’s stranglehold on much of the western world meant that, during the middle ages and for a long time after, medical advances elsewhere vastly outstripped those in places like England and France.

The twin myths of the African witch doctor and the evil black man come to steal white women in the night have their origins, not in the American South but in Inquisition-era France and Spain.  Christian doctors weren’t allowed to touch their female patients, and situations like breech births utterly confounded them.  So it wasn’t unusual for people to sneak African doctors into their houses, occasionally through such charming points of entry as the garderobes, to provide obstetric care.

The church, obviously, didn’t care for this.

Propaganda was born.

It’s a fascinating world we live in, and always has been.  A world that, if you really take the time to examine it, is going to challenge your preconceptions.  The books in this house that aren’t our favorite novels are, on the balance, my husband’s books on various Hinduism-related topics and my books on medieval history.  Books I visit every day.

Thoughts?

What Kim Davis Got Wrong

Putting aside the obvious–that she swore an oath to uphold the law, that Jesus Himself was a big fan of separation of church and state (“render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s…”) and that we have separation of church and state in this country, as provided by the Constitution, there’s something else: “accepting Christ,” whatever that means to the individual, doesn’t wipe the slate clean as her lawyer suggests.  Her lawyer, who should probably go back and reread the Bible.  As should she.

Let me explain.

While Jesus never said squat about homosexuality, He was very clear on the issue of whether someone like Kim Davis could be considered to be doing the right thing.  He unequivocally states that following Him, i.e. becoming a Christian, means that one goes forth and sins no more (John 8:11).  In other words, adopting His teachings as laid out both by Him and in Jewish law.  Second, Jesus also, also unequivocally, states that anyone who leaves their spouse and marries someone else is living in sin.  So, putting these two concepts together, the message is pretty clear: joining the church means, not deciding that your first marriage (and second, and third) doesn’t count so now you can do whatever you want but ceasing to, according to Jesus’ own definition, live in sin.

Which is why–well, which is why you should never try to out-Bible a recovering conservative Christian from a fringe group where Bible memorization is kind of the only educational game in town–the Mennonite Church, as an example, forbids, not separation but remarriage.  Separation is allowed in certain cases, i.e. that of domestic abuse, but the slate is by no means “wiped clean” according to Kim Davis’ self-serving definition.  Or her lawyer’s.  Or whoever is really running this parade’s.

According to the very Bible that Kim Davis claims to defend, a person who remarries is living in sin.  Period.  And while you can repent of, say, premarital sex (if you feel that such a thing is required, i.e. according to the tenets of your faith) the only way to truly repent of anything is to stop doing it. You can stop having premarital sex and, guess what, Kim Davis, you can stop being married. It’s not wholly uncommon for women, and men, to, upon joining the Mennonite faith, leave their second (or third, or fourth) spouses and choose to live as single people so they can be baptized.

Is this harsh?  Does it seem unfair?  If you think so then, guess what, we agree!  But a lot of Biblical prohibitions are ignored (i.e. nobody’s run out of town for wearing cotton-poly), and rules relaxed.  We’ve come to the enlightened conclusion, for example, that killing people for having premarital sex is wrong.  And that you can’t sell your disobedient children into slavery.  And that marriage by kidnapping doesn’t qualify as “traditional marriage,” despite the Bible claiming otherwise.  Because, you know, progress.

Selective literalism serves one purpose, and that’s to feed the ego.  To feed one’s sense of right.  Of being right, of doing right, of being better than everyone else.  And if there’s one notion I’ve retained from my childhood, it’s the idea that ego leads to pride, which leads to narcissism.  You’re not “standing up for something” when you’re a narcissist.  You can most truly be yourself when you’re plain.  When you concentrate on making the world around you better, rather than wondering how you fit into it.

If Kim Davis wants a loving God, feels that she deserves a loving God, then maybe it’s time she recognize that other people might, too.  That the same God, who she feels blesses her marriage despite its not being in harmony with biblical teachings might indeed also bless other marriages.  Because maybe it’s not about goats and shekels and stoning virgins but about love.

And love knows no limit.

When Will The Demon of Darkling Reach Be Free Again?

The short answer: probably not until The Black Prince is released.

I may do a promotion then, either shortly before or shortly after the release date, to celebrate the completion of the series.  It’ll depend, though; the last few times I’ve run a free book promotion not too many people have been interested.  These things only work, for both of us, if people pick up the books!  So, another factor in terms of the timing and length of the promotion will be how much interest I get on here, on Facebook, etc.  But, rest assured, I’ll do something (it just might be, you know, one day instead of three, or five).

I’d also talked about doing giveaways, in the past, but I’m still unclear as to how much interest there is in something like that?

If you are interested, then, please, let me know in the comments what kind of giveaway, or giveaways, most interest you.