New reissues – Anne Stuart

BRAVE NEW WORLD (January 25, 2022)

The dam has burst, the block has broken, and all is sunshine and rainbows! I’m back to writing – in fact, I haven’t missed a day since the new year.(That is, not a day in my weekly five day work week. When I miss a work day I catch upon the weekend).

It Takes a Thief is finally taking shape. I’d worked last year between bouts of frustration and block and managed to squeeze out about 200 pages, most of which I despised, but i sent it to two trusted friends, Lynda Ward and Jenny Crusie, to find out whether I should toss the sucker or try to save it. Both of them said, SAVE IT, so I’ve been working on that for the last three weeks. First I had to go through it, toss it the last 14,000 words (Oh, the pain), and then go and rewrite the first 30,000 words, which I’ve had to do twice already and which will definitely need another go-round. First I changed the wishy-washy, mouse-like heroine. Then I changed the confusing villain (I’m still a bit confused about him but he’s coming together). Then I had to put my hero on the page a whole lot more. Then I had to clean up everything else.

But now I’m finally moving forward, writing more stuff and feeling normal again. For some reason I never feel quite right when I’m not writing, but nothing I could do would make it work last year. It just felt stagnant, dead in the water, utterly miserable.

I blame Covid. I was languishing, as so many people have been.

I’ve been really frustrated with Audible because there haven’t been enough new books by writers I love coming out, and then I realized they’re languishing too! (The favorite writers, not Audible. Audible is flourishing, thank God. I have something like 1,300 audio books in my library and I’m hungry for more).

But languish is no longer in my vocabulary. Not only am I moving steadily forward on this, but the follow-up, To Catch a Thief, is already fully formed in my head and I can’t wait to get to it. So as Crusie would say, nothing but good times ahead.

In the meantime, during the doldrums, I’ve been working on reprints. Coming out soon are THE FALL OF MAGGIE BROWN, which was surprisingly delightful (I’d thought of it as a sort of throwaway work since way back when it was internet only) and A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT, which is deliciously gothic and has a marvelous manga available at Amazon. https://amzn.to/3rSRl5g. I’ve also been reading and revising all my novellas, some of which are really good (some of which are meh) and now I need to figure out how to print them.

And then there’ll be the new one, sometime in March, I hope.

Ah, when I’m writing life is glorious.
Anything glorious happening for you? If you’re a writer, how’s the writing going? If you’re a reader, have you had trouble with languishing authors and finding enough of the good stuff to read?

Life Musings, New reissues

All the Storms

Life has a habit of making other plans. I’ve been in absentia again, due to all sorts of issues, but I’ve lost my main ways of pondering life, so I’m going to do it here. Eventually it’ll morph into fun and games, but right now I’m just being thoughtful. I’m working my ass off on so many things, so first I’ll give you a book update.
1. I just finished writing a really wonderful book. You know when you read a book and the world stays with you? Some of you immediately go back and reread it, some of you can’t read anything else for a day or two. I remember when I read Sunshine by Robin McKinley, I stopped a couple of chapters before the end and just clasped it to my breast. Seriously. Well, I feel that way about the new, untitled book. I started it as a Christmas novella, to be out last year, and it was supposed to be piffle. I almost immediately knew it was going to be more than a novella, so I sent it to my agent, who said expand it, and I put it to one side and worked on another project. When that self-destructed I went back to it, and it just blossomed like a dark rose. I want to go back there – I want to listen to it in audio, I want to dream in that world.
The world of publishing is completely random nowadays, so who knows what will happen to it. My agent has it now, and I’m relatively sanguine about the outcome. It could be glory or disaster, but then, those things come out of throwing everything into life. If there’s no market for it I’ll make one, and I’ll move on, because there are so many more books to write. But this is one of the special ones.

2. I’ve been revising older stuff. Belle Bridge Books is coming out with Crazy Like a Fox in the next couple of days, and that was so much fun! Sometimes when I revise older books I end up being astonished at how much I like some that I’d forgotten about, and disappointed in some of my favorites. I can’t figure out why. I’m about to put out Rafe’s Revenge, and originally I’d thought of that as a sort of throwaway. I ended up loving it -I don’t know why I thought there wasn’t much to it. Maybe my life was going insane at the time – my life has a tendency to do that with lots of sturm und drang, usually not caused by me. Lots of storm and disaster in my family. But both of those books were a real treat. Next up is Special Gifts, which I adored and was a RITA finalist – I’m hoping that won’t turn into a disappointment.

3. I’ve redone the Maggie Bennett novels, with new covers, rewritten, and those I still loved. It only makes sense that I’d love my books – after all, they’re written by someone who knows my fantasies and wants exactly the same characters and stories that move me. I can’t imagine writing someone I hated.
Well, I did do that, twice. And trust me, I didn’t like it and don’t like those books. Though maybe those will be ones I go back to and end up pleasantly surprised.

4. Nanowrimo is starting, and I’m going back to a proposal I adored. I never finished it because I had too many contracts to fill, but now is definitely the time. I promise I’ll come back and tell you all about them.

But in the meantime it’s Halloween and the world is a horror show. I’m going to do my best to keep up the holiday spirit – I live in a very small, rural Vermont town, and we have very few trick or treaters. This year our delightfully liberal church has decided to organize a local Halloween trail in the town proper. Since most of the houses are owned by summer visitors they tend to be empty, but they’ve given permission for a bunch of us to porch sit and hand out candy. I’ll be wearing my nun’s habit, with spooky lights (and long johns underneath) and maybe even a boombox full of spooky music if I can find one in my crowded house. A good buddy is the next house up, so we can cackle at each other if the mood strikes us. This is a world where goblins and witches are the good guys, where demons are hot and sexy, and the “good” people carry torches. When I was young people used to say I lived in a fantasy world. I think it’s a much better place to be.

Life is a balancing act and right now the see-saw is little off. It’ll get better. And I have something to write that I love. My family is stable, my cats are wonderful, my sewing machines are working, my husband is fabulous — what me worry? Sometimes you gotta work hard to be happy. Fortunately, I can do that.

Happy Halloween!

New reissues, special sales

October

My God it’s been a busy month. Masses of stuff going on – the Russell books are on sale at Amazon for one more day, The Spinster and the Rake on sale till November as well. Plus, lots and lots of new stuff going on.

To start, NIGHTFALL, what vies for my most favorite book, has just come out in audio, and I have to say the sex in that book is Epic. OMG! Well, the entire book, characters, relationships are incredibly intense, and the sex reflects that. I can’t tell you how much I love that book.

BREAK THE NIGHT (do I have Night theme going on here?) has come out in paper and e-book, plus it’s going to be in audio as well! It’s Jack the Ripper, Venice, California, reincarnation, sex, murderer, sex … another theme, alas.

And then, just this month, a long lost treasure has reappeared. Centuries ago I wrote a book called BANISH MISFORTUNE, which, trust me, is a terrible title. It’s named after an old fiddle tune, and it really worked, except that you can’t say it out loud even once, much less three times in a row, and you can’t abbreviate it by the initials either. It won the RITA for best single title Way Back Then, beating Lavyrle Spencer (who helpfully send me a five-page letter on how I could become a better writer when it did) but it was part of a very short-lived program put out by Harlequin American, my publisher at the time. They were called Harlequin American Premiere Editions, and my book sold a grand total of 5,000 copies at a time when the regular ones were selling 70 to 80,000. It was never reprinted, though Mira had planned to.

So we changed the title, considering so few people had ever read it – it’s now WHEN THE STARS FALL DOWN, available everywhere. There are a couple of reviews at Amazon that are very dismissing, which surprises me – I was blown away by it when I reread it after more than thirty years. It’s very autobiographical (and I adore the subplot) so maybe it’s just me, but if you’ve read it and like it hike on over to Amazon and slap me up a good review. I kept the time period in the early 80s, because to me it was such a clear representation of that time and how it felt. It’s a little heart-breaking, got a perfect ending, great sex … Ah, good times.

And I finished HEARTLESS (I’m doing the revisions right now), Emma and Brandon’s story, and it’s a good ‘un. Brandon turned out to be a bit more decent than my usual heroes – he has his demons but he also has a certain amount of fairness, and he likes tender sex as well as rough sex.

(Good God, do I only talk about sex? I’ve written some very good books without it, and some of my favorite books have none. However, since we’re reading and writing love stories, I want to experience all of it, not just up to the bedroom door).

More stuff is in the pipeline. I’m not sure how Heartless is going to be published – I’ll no more when the revisions are done, and then I’m off to write a bit of revenge-porn, plus a Christmas novella, plus so many other stories …

In the meantime, though, happy reading.

New reissues, special sales

Brrrr!

It’s freaking freezing here. It’s almost 11 and it’s 57 degrees a week before the fourth of July. I just had to close the window beside me, and I’m tough. I don’t button my coat until it’s ten degrees above zero (anyone remember the old song, “The Logger”? That’s me.) Not sure if we’re going to have much of a summer.

I went down to NJ to visit my Best Pal, Jenny Crusie, and we talked and cuddled dogs and went to Wonder Woman and shopped and talked and talked and talked. All of my close friends around here have moved, leaving me with only acquaintances and I tend to bemoan the fact, but you know, the quality of my friendships with people like Jenny is so high it’s a good trade-off.

Still fighting the epic battle of revising Brandon and Emma (I was a about three quarters done when I could go no further, and I’ve practically written a new book since then). The good news is, it’s going to be excellent once it’s done – I’m getting rid of all the fluff, even if I loved it, and I’ll put the best fluff here. I’ve got a number of goodies, like a deleted love scene from WARRIOR (one of the Kristina Douglas books) and some cool stuff from others that, much as I love it, just doesn’t fit. William Faulkner said “Kill your darlings” and I dutifully do so, but every now and then I like to revisit them.

There are some fabulous books out there – I listened to the Audie winner for best romance, DIRTY by Kylie Scott (excellent), WHITE HOT by Ilona Andrews (worth the wait), the latest Patricia Briggs, with a new Jay Crownover, the female Sherlock Holmes from Sherry Thomas, and so many other good things to read. I think there’s a new Meredith Duran coming out, plus tons of others. I’d love to hear recommendations if anyone has any.

New reissues (revised and cleaned up a bit but not necessarily updated – some of the stories belong in the time they were written). BREAK THE NIGHT is my Jack the Ripper story. It was a RITA finalist, and I was was surprised to see physical copies of the paperback are starting at $40 some dollars. Yikes. http://amzn.to/2sdPx64 This was my one book for Silhouette Shadows, the short-lived paranormal line that produced so many wonderful books. Maggie Shayne had vampires, someone else had werewolves, so I said “I’ll do Jack the Ripper!” thinking gaslight and lurking evil etc.

Unfortunately I had no idea how gross Saucy Jack was. I got several books about him, then was horrified to discover that there were pictures of the crime scenes, of mutilated bodies! He was really, really foul – he didn’t cut throats, he cut parts …
Anyway, my darling niece paper clipped those pages together for me so I wouldn’t have to see them while I read about him. I still had to wallow in the stuff in order to write the book, and in the end it was worth it, but next time I’ll do a little more research before I raise my hand and say “me, me, me!”

The book is all about reincarnation in modern day Venice, California – the hero and the heroine have shadowy memories, and they’re tied in with a new spate of killings. The hero, a freelance journalist on the edge, is horribly afraid he might be the reincarnation of Jack the Ripper himself.

For some reason the French love it – they reissued it three times. I went in and cleaned things up a bit, took out any clunky phrasing, added to the love scenes (of course), caught any mistakes (I think this was the one where the heroine’s eye color changed throughout the book). But it’s a good ‘un, part of the Greatest Hits collection (One More Valentine, Cinderman, Blue Sage, Night of the Phantom, and The Soldier, the Nun and the Baby).

And if you have a Kindle Fire, today is the day you can buy the House of Russell series (Never Kiss etc) for a special price. I need to dig out my Fire and see – I’m usually on the Paperwhite since you can read outdoors with it. But if you haven’t read them it might be a good way.

And one of my absolutely best books, NIGHTFALL, is on sale for the rest of the month for $1.99 at Amazon.http://tinyurl.com/y7exaoua

But you know, I don’t like selling books, I like talking. Go buy the new Ilona Andrews or something else – just read. It’s the most glorious thing in the world – sometimes it feels like the only safe place. At least, that’s the way it’s always been for me.

Cheers!