At Long Last!

I’m not gonna lie. I was going to lie, but I decided not to. I had this whole elaborate story about how I was too busy writing and working to be blogging or sending updates to my email list. And I have been busy, but who has’t, right? But we make time for the things that matter, even when we’ve got too many balls in the air. We drop the stuff we don’t want to do.  So that’s what I did. Let the spankings commence. 
            To be fair, I wrote and edited so much the last 6 months that I have the second Kate Warne novel out (See that pretty cover at the top of this column?), the third one nearly ready to go. I also met my third deadline for a 3 volume encyclopedia (something I’m working on with my friend Rosanne Welch), a novel in a new series ready for publication in December (it’s got unicorns and vampires!) and yet another novel, something I wrote on spec for a new press, out late this year or early next year. So that’s a lot of words. And then summer ended and I had to go back to school, at both my full-time and part-time jobs and there’s a lot of papers to grade. And I had an editing process to retool and refine.
            Fine. That’s all true. But here’s the other thing—the true thing. I sold a bunch of you a book that was a hot mess. My first version of The Lincoln Special was riddled with typos and stupid little editing mistakes. I felt (and feel) really bad, though I know I should be patient with myself. I’m learning a lot. Learning to write the books was easy. Learning to publish them was harder, but not impossible. I learned that my editing process was not good enough. Sooo, I’ve retooled my process in a number of ways and then took the first versions (print and ebook) of The Lincoln Special down and remounted a cleaner version. But that doesn’t help those of you who bought the bad version.  The new book is cleaner, but I still feel bad. So I’ve been avoiding the marketing side of my business. Pretty mature, huh.
            So here’s my deal with you. Sign up for my email list (and if you already have, good for you) and have a drawing for 5 free copies of The Great Show ONE WEEK FROM TODAY. I’ll send the 5 winners an email and ask for a mailing address. All my print books come with access to a free electronic version of the same book, so if you like to read in a kindle (like me) you can do that too. Then, if you think that book deserves it you can leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads.
Peg
PS: Two days ago I learned my co-editor Rosanne Welch and I won a Best Book Award from the American Book Fest for our American Women in History encyclopedia. It’s only my second book award so it was weirdly exciting. The encyclopedia is WAY too expensive for mere mortals to buy but you can go see it at my web  page (peglamphier.com) or at Amazon.