Welcome, new folks!

Hi, there. If you've joined the mailing list recently, I want to make sure you get your free Frosthelm book, Traitors Unseen. If you haven't gotten it, you can get it free here (the site will ask you to sign up for this newsletter, which you're already getting) or here from Smashwords. It's also on Apple Books, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble. Please, enjoy with my compliments.

Get Lady Isovar for free!

Here's a special freebie alert for newsletter subscribers: Mark your calendars! The ebook of The Glorious and Epic Tale of Lady Isovar will be free on Amazon from June 10th to June 14th as part of a BookBub featured deal. I'd love to see this book find more readers, so feel free to share it with friends!

ConCarolinas

I took part in ConCarolinas this past weekend in Charlotte. I was on five panels and had a good time talking about books, games, marketing, finance, and technology. I also had the chance to sell and sign books for a couple hours on Friday at my little table pictured above. This was the second con I've attended, and I have another one in July (ConGregate in Winston-Salem) and the big international WorldCon in Seattle in August. It's fun getting to meet other authors, readers, gamers, and sci-fi and fantasy fans at these things, and I'm looking forward to doing more of this as I continue to write and publish.

New reviews

I wrote a couple of new reviews in the past couple weeks, one for Celestially Yours for the SPSFC, and two for the movies Sinners and the new Mission Impossible. Let me know what you think!

A new project

I have a fun new project to report. I'm working on a contemporary humorous romance with a good friend and fellow author Sarah Estow. Her site is here if you want to check it out. She and I met while teaching at Guilford College (she in psychology, me in geology), and we're both now spending most of our time writing novels. She writes romance, and she's pursuing the traditional publishing route and has an agent working on selling her latest project. We meet every month to talk about writing and our books, and we've each read and offered feedback on the other's novels. She was particularly helpful with What Grows From the Dead and with my new contemporary mystery that I'm finishing up. For this new project, we're alternating chapters and point-of-view. Our characters start out as not the biggest fans of each other, but we're working on ways to throw them together in a campus intrigue. It's really fun alternating chapters and finding ways to have the characters interact. We've got four chapters done now, and we'll keep working on it for the rest of this year. I've never written romance, so this is a new area for me, but I've got Sarah to help keep me on the right path.

Writing update

I'm most of the way through Sarah's comments on the new mystery, which I think I'm calling Unwelcome Matt. I have another extensive set of line notes after that (maybe 50 comments) from another early reader, and then I'll do my final pass and it will be off to Tami for copyediting and proofing. Still looking at a June release if I can get everything done.

Some stories to try

I'm part of several author collectives, and we share each other's work to try to help all of us reach more readers. In many cases, the books we share are are free or discounted. Sometimes, they ask that you sign up for a newsletter like this one. Here are some new books I have to share this month:

First up, I have Stakes and Bones by Ken Bebelle and Julia Vee. This is an urban fantasy with a young monster hunter competing to join an elite squad, along with vampire princes, political intrigue, and all that good stuff. Like sticks and stones, I think this could break some bones.

Next, I have Alienated by C.G. Harris. This is an alien abduction story, but instead of a cow out in the country, the aliens have stolen a whole cruise ship. A kid who never wanted to be on the cruise anyway has to figure out what's going on and try to make his way across the alien's planet to stay alive and try to find the other humans.

Finally, I have The Midnight Society by Orion Blake, the third book in the Rise of the Skinwalkers series. There's a team of intrepid folks on the heels of evil shapeshifters, and like Scooby-Doo, they have a dog on the team, one whom the blurb indicates develops new abilities. I'm assuming that's more than shake, roll over, and sit. If monster invasion and body-snatching is your thing, check this out.

Thanks

Thanks so much for signing up for my newsletter. Hopefully by the next one of these I'll have a release date for the new mystery for you. I hope you're having a great summer (for my northern hemisphere readers) and a rollicking good winter for the southerners.

May the Bloodmother watch over you - 

Dave