International Editions: Brazil, Czech Republic, Poland, Romania

It's always a lovely surprise to find international editions in my mailbox. These turned up most recently.

Top row left to right: Not Quite a Lady (Romania), Not Quite a Lady (Czech Republic), Silk is for Seduction (Poland)

Bottom row left to right: Scandal Wears Satin (Poland), Dukes Prefer Blondes (Brazil)

Those Puzzling Messages from Amazon UK

Marguerite Gérard, Lady Reading in an Interior

Loyal readers in the UK recently alerted me to an upsetting development. They have received messages from Amazon UK telling them they can’t get copies of A Duke in Shining Armor. These readers had pre-ordered (thank you!) and things were OK, I guess, until the recent message arrived, telling them things were not OK.

Well, that can't be right, can it? No, it isn't. I checked.

Here’s the good news: A Duke in Shining Armor will definitely be available in its various formats—print, eBook, audio, etc.—in the UK/Australia/New Zealand. Sometime on or near the U.S. release date, it will magically reappear on Amazon (fingers crossed).

But for complicated reasons, apparently having to do with who has what territorial rights where (we’ve been in this surreal world before, alas), Amazon won’t allow us to have preorders. Or something like that. Until they decide they will (which could happen, too.)

Really, I do not understand, and probably wouldn’t even if Amazon explained. I would just put my head on my desk and cry.

It’s all part of the dreaded business of international contracts, which I discuss here, and which, I’m grieved to say, has come up many times before on this blog.

The Clarendon Hotel, pictured here, plays a crucial role in A Duke in Shining Armor.

Image: Egerton, The Leech, from the Fashionable Bores series, 1824, courtesy Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

Once again, dear reader, thank you for your patience. I’m sorry this contract business tries it so often. But we are learning how to work around these technical difficulties, and this time, I trust you will get the book, in the form you prefer, sooner rather than later.

In compensation for this and other trials you’ve endured on behalf of my books, I am planning to send out exclusive content via this blog as well as posts in advance of those that will appear in the various other places where I yammer on about something or other.

News from here and abroad, including Brazil & Portugal

It's been a while, and I have a lot of catching up to do. For instance, what have I been doing all this time since May? For one thing, I was in Europe: a month living in London, a week in Albania, a week in Italy, then back to London and home again, home again. Where the page proofs for A Duke in Shining Armor awaited me.

Page proofs are my last chance to correct errors and crazy, twitchy stuff I can't believe I did, which nobody else caught for some reason. Things like using a certain phrase over and over. This happens in every book, and it's always a different phrase, and every single time, I don't pick up on it until the page proofs come. This may have to do with seeing pages that actually look like book pages, rather than typed manuscript pages. Or it could be my brain. Because. You know.

But the page proofs have gone their merry way, and everything seems on time for the December 2017 release of my first Difficult Dukes book. There will be some public appearances connected with this, which I will tell you about when details are confirmed. Suffice to say that they will involve some of my favorite author friends, and I am very excited.

Also, before long I'll be reporting on my travels abroad. I would have reported while abroad, but the technology issues became daunting. It was all I could do to get a few Two Nerdy History Girl posts in here and there. And yes, I was very busy trying not to waste one fabulous minute, which left not much time or brain power for social media.

Until then, for your visual enjoyment, here are some lovely new editions to look at, from Brazil and Portugal, of Vixen in Velvet.