My father always used to tell me,
when I said I would do this or that tomorrow or next week, that the road
to the most insalubrious of the netherworlds was paved with good intentions.
Alack and alas, all of 2009 I have been paving that road with energy ...
and not applying the energy to anything more profitable.
At the beginning of 2009 I had
the good intention of writing brief notes to announce the publication by Cerridwen
Press of my books set in the Napoleonic age and another series set in the 13th century
following the Marlowe family. Unfortunately that good intention only supplied
a paving stone on that road to hell for each book. Now I can only announce that
all the books are available in a wide selection of e formats (suitable for Sony,
Kindle, and a variety of cell phones and PDAs) from http://www.cerridwenpress.com. In
addition, a number of the books are available in Trade Paperback too.
My only complaint about Cerridwen
Press is that you cannot put my name into the Search box and come up with the
page listing my work. What you must do is look in the left margin of the Home
Page for Books by. Under that listing is the word Authors. If you click on that,
you will find an alphabetical listing of authors and you will find me under G.
Clicking on my name will bring you to a page that shows the covers of all my
books published by Cerridwen. And clicking on any cover will show a page with
a very brief summary of the novel and other particulars. For more details and
an exerpt from the text, go to the Books page in this website and click on the
title.
I must apologize for the covers
on SIREN SONG, WINTER SONG, FIRE SONG, and A SILVER MIRROR. The covers on the
Napoleonic books (THE ENGLISH HEIRESS, THE CORNISH HEIRESS, THE KENT HEIRESS,
FORTUNES BRIDE, and A WOMANS ESTATE) were, I thought, lovely, but I objected
to the first set of covers for the Royal Dynasty books. In response Cerridwen
never showed me the second set. For some obscure reason they seem to have decided
on depicting malformed heroines. I assure you that the stories are about perfectly
normal women and in my usual style.
As I confessed at the beginning
of this letter, I have not accomplished much in 2009. I did do a rather long
short story, called Compeer, which was published in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF IRISH
ROMANCE. The story is set in the Irish legendary period and describes the meeting
and marriage of Queen Medb and King Ailill of Connaught. And I have finally come
to within one (or at the most two) chapter(s) of the fifth Magdalene and Bell
book. I hope I will do no more paving of insubstantial roads and actually finish
BISHOP TO KING, CHECK! in the next month.
I will make no promises about
future Dear Friends letters, but if I find a publisher for BISHOP, I will let
you know (sooner or later) when the book will be available.
Roberta
Dear Friends,
This letter is going to be short and sweet because I am bursting with a brilliant
idea. Well—I think it’s brilliant.
The other day while I was reading one of my mail list messages, my good friend Bertrice Small said something about sending bookplates to readers who asked for them. I’ve done this too, of course, but the bookplates I have are ... ah ... plain. Or, to be truthful, rather ugly to my way of thinking. What is more they all say Ex Libris or From the Library of ... as if the book had been stolen by the reader from my library. Thus, I’ve never been terribly enthusiastic about sending signed bookplates. However, someone (please forgive me for not noting who supplied the reference) replied to Bertrice that she had bookplates made up for her by a skilled designer and printer called Laron Glover. Since I have a passion for stationary, I went to Laron’s website and was delighted with what I saw there.
Now I am in possession of a number of beautiful bookplates that are simply imprinted with my name and website. I would like to offer a signed bookplate (choose your design) to any reader who has purchased one of my Trade Paperbacks from Cerridwen Press. (Just send an email copy of the receipt for the book.) Or to any reader who has purchased one of the Doubled Edge books (coauthored by Mercedes Lackey and published by Baen Books). Again, I would have to ask for a copy of the receipt for the book and for a snail mail address to which I could send the signed bookplate.
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