Wednesday, October 5, 2016


Yay for October

 
The reason I’m yaying for October is ‘cause I get to visit California and see my friends and kids and one of my grandsons. In order to see the other grandson and his wife and children, I’ll have to go to North Carolina, which is considerably farther from Roswell, New Mexico, than California is. I aim to take a good picture of the house in which Daisy and her family live while I’m in Pasadena.

September was a pretty good month for yours truly, if you discount the fact that the physical therapist tried to kill me. With needles. Took me nearly a month to recover from his “dry needling” of my left glute, dang it, and he set my for-the-back-pain exercises back a long, dreary way. However, I can now walk the wieners and do exercises again (whoopee, but you gotta do what you gotta do).

I’ll get in touch with the folks who won copies of books in September in individual e-mails. If you’d like to enter October’s contest, I’ll be giving away audio copies of ANCIENT SPIRITS, in which Daisy Gumm Majesty and Harold Kincaid travel to Egypt and Turkey because everyone (except Daisy) thinks the trip will help heal her grief over losing her husband, Billy. Naturally, things go wrong, but Sam Rotondo rushes to Turkey and tries to save the day. He doesn’t quite succeed, but the day is saved anyway. Here’s the audio cover for ANCIENT SPIRITS, which is remarkably akin to the e-book and paperback cover for the same book. There’s even a link if you’re burning to hear it and don’t want to wait to see if you’ve won a copy. Denice Stradling, who’s narrated all of my Daisy books so far, does a terrific job, as usual, on this one:

 

 Another good thing happened in September. My wonderful publisher, ePublishing Works, has begun selling hardback copies of some of their books. Included in this hardback experiment is my latest Daisy book, BRUISED SPIRITS. I’m particularly fond of BRUISED SPIRITS, because it’s based on a real, live woman’s story (her story is extremely grim, by the way). The book deals with spousal abuse and kidnapped-for-the-sex-trade children. I have absolutely no idea how I can write funny books about stuff like that. Guess it’s a gift, if an odd one. If you have a special need for hardback copies of my books, you might be interested in this one:
 
 
Naturally, since hardbacks are expensive, feel free to purchase the e-book or the paperback. I’m not greedy. Much.

Oh! And if you’ve ever wondered what the White side-treadle sewing machine on which Daisy makes all of her clothes looks like, here it is. This is my machine, and I actually used to sew clothes on it for my daughters and me:
 
 
In the meantime, I’ve been madly editing Frontier Fiction books for Five Star and been having a whale of a time doing it. I love editing. It’s ever so much easier than writing, although I wish I had more time to write. But one has to earn a living for oneself and one’s hounds, don’t you know. I’ve been able to edit for some wonderful western authors and consider myself privileged because of it.
One of these days, however, I must finish the next Daisy book, SPIRITS UNITED (in which I murder a librarian, but only because Lynne Welch, former RWA Librarian of the Year and overall librarian extraordinaire, asked me to). I will finish it. Promise.
If you’re interested in visiting my woefully out-of-date web site, please do so at: http://aliceduncan.net/ . And if you’d like to be Facebook buds, just go to my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/alice.duncan.925
Thank you!