The author copies of My Inconvenient Duke arrived over the weekend, in all their misty purple glory, and bearing the wonderful new-book scent. Yes, I wrote the thing, and yes, I see the cover art (and put in my 2¢ about this and that), but it’s not real to me until I have the actual book in my hand.
Today—if all goes well and all the various editions are in the right place at the right time—you’ll be able to have the book in your hand, too, or else see it on your e-reader or phone or listen to Kate Reading give my characters voices, in her own remarkable way.
I hope you’ll enjoy Alice and Blackwood’s story and the visit to London in the early 1830s. This was a very short time before photography and before trains began replacing those often overworked horses for transportation. It was a time of ebullient women’s fashion: big sleeves and big hair and layers of petticoats to make big skirts in the days before crinoline.
Normally, my blog posts are rather infrequent. Sometimes months go by, and I am silent. This is because it strikes me as intelligent to shut up when I’ve nothing to say, and because an inbox flooded with emails from the same entity gets on my nerves, and I’d rather not get on my readers’ nerves. But a new book release means a flurry of chit-chat.
In other words, in the coming weeks, you can expect a series of blog posts (and other social media posts) related to the book. My Pinterest page, which has boards for each of my books, will show you some of the people, places, and events that come up in the story. This is my way of creating a sort of glossary and illustrated version.
Then I promise to quiet down.