Unwelcome Matt is free right now!

You can grab a free copy of Unwelcome Matt, my cozy amateur sleuth mystery about a librarian who arrives home to find her feckless housemate vanished and a dead body on her couch. It's free as an ebook until May 18th, so enjoy! You can get it from your local Amazon from this link.

Best, is on the way!

And yes, the comma is part of the title, not a typo. Named after the sometimes-sarcastic email closing line common in academia, this is a romantic comedy about Flora and Mark, two mid-career professors assigned to work with each other on their college's budget committee. The problem? They loathe each other. But as they work through a mystery that just might be a scandal, foisted on them by an anonymous source, they start to see some good in each other. Some of the time.

You may remember from previous newsletters that this is a co-written book, where I took the Mark chapters and my co-author wrote the Flora chapters, giving the book two distinct, alternating points of view. We've commissioned art from Ummul Mansura, and my cover designer is hard at work on the lettering and design for the cover. Here's a sneak peek at what's coming:

Olivia should finish up with the design sometime next week, and then it will just be a final readthrough and assembly for the ebook and paperback. We might try to do some ARC (advance review copy) distribution for this one, so if you'd be interested in getting an early copy and posting a review somewhere, let me know. That's a strategy that some authors swear by, because it gets some reviews in place before the book launches, but I don't usually do that. I'll let you know next newsletter.

Some sci-fi reviews

I've reviewed a couple of books for the 5th annual SPSFC sci fi competition. If you'd like to see some of our quarterfinalists. Our team page with all our info is here, and my recent reviews of are below:

• The Triangle Age (a super weird and imaginative story of a collapsing culture on a colony ship)

• Gamer (a gritty cyberpunk gaming story with a mystery and a vengeance motive guiding the main character)

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, I have Victory of the Crown by Paul J. Bennett. This is the just-released 15th (!) and last in his series of very highly-rated, very popular medieval military history books. If you like soldiers on the march, legions and emperors, and plenty of military and political intrigue, it looks like this has all that in spades.

Next, I have Return to the Galaxy by B.A. Gillies, the first book of his seven-part series about a dying SAS soldier transformed into a supersoldier just in time to defend Earth against an alien threat that's not unrelated to humanity's surprise origin on another world. A lot going on there! A 4.3-star average on over a thousand reviews, and free if you have Amazon Prime as part of their Prime reading program.

Finally, I have My Meth by Elara Voss. This looks like a super dark and creepy psychological thriller. I'm not sure if the titular "meth" is drugs or not, but there's plenty of depravity to go around even without it. Have a look, if you dare.

Thanks

I am really excited that Best, is always here. I hope you'll enjoy it! Watch this space for more news as we get closer to release.

May the Bloodmother watch over you - 

Dave