More and More, They Are

This month A Year with the Harrisons is going to be in two free book promotions, one for adults and one for children. Normally I only do one promotion per book, but Harrisons is a really neat story because it is peppered with grownup characters who have a lot of pizzazz and a larger than life flair and with teen characters who belong to real-world conversations about society, education, and family. So both adults and teens can really enjoy it, making it cross over into both categories.

This week's promotion is the June Children’s Book Giveaway, which has lots of books for young people ranging from preschool to young adult. A Year with the Harrisons, obviously, is YA so it’s a bit on the older end of the spectrum here. Click here to visit this great giveaway if you enjoy children’s and YA books and would like to grab some while they’re free. Just subscribe to author’s newsletters.

You can download Harrisons along with the other books. If that doesn’t work, click this link instead for a direct download. But only for my book. Be sure to check out the others!

. . . .

It’s certainly time to start greasing the publishing wheel again and breaking some ground for new books. While there are always things that could still be developed about my older books, audiences reinvent themselves naturally over time anyway. So in a way, there’s no “end” to it. For example, just look at the many film and TV adaptations of Emma or Pride and Prejudice. While some things remain constant, there are also abundant differences as time goes on. Each new version builds on older ones, as some characters go through many phases and develop in surprising ways.

Similarly, while my older books are still active entities, with ups and downs, I want to write more books because there are so many characters I haven’t explored yet. As we go month-by-month through the five central characters of each book I’ve published, what really shows is that each story is unique. They offer different characters for readers to relate to. After all, books aren’t relevant unless they echo our relationships in real life. We’ll feel about characters the way we feel about ourselves and the people around us.

When someone responds to a character, they think this little avatar tells their story. And I get more ideas as I go places and live life—ideas for characters. Somewhere, out there, there is always someone new to write about--their relationships, loves and hates, friendships and adventures, the genre they like to read, the historical era they’ve claimed as theirs. Wherever I go, I look for a new story to tell because so many people who deserve to have their story told haven’t appeared in my work yet. I don’t write about everyone, of course. That would be beyond my capacity and pretty exhausting too, to understate. But like most authors, I belong to a particular set of people. I call this a “dimension,” probably because of a residue left on me from writing so much speculative.