April

 SPIRITS UNEARTHED, Daisy Gumm Majesty’s 12^th (actually, it’s her 13^th, but let’s not get into that again) adventure is being released on the 17^th of April! What’s more, one of Aunt Vi’s recipes will appear in this book: Smothered Chicken, Swedish Style. You’ll have to get the book to read the recipe, but I found one very interesting historical item in it. In order to create this recipe, you begin by hauling out your Scotch kettle! I had no idea what a Scotch kettle was, so I looked it up on Google, and turns out it’s a Dutch oven! You just never know about these things, do you? Here it is:

And here you have the cover of SPIRITS UNEARTHED. Immediately below the cover is a link to purchase it for your Amazon Kindle or your B&N Nook:

 

 

Amazon Link

B&N Link

By the way, in case you’re not tired of pre-ordering Daisy books, here’s the place-holder and Amazon link to SHAKEN SPIRITS, Daisy’s 13^th (actually 14^th, but we knew that already) adventure:

AmazonLink

I can’t find the Nook link, so I’ll just have to post it later.

March was an uneven month. I had to have Giblett, my problem child, put to sleep. Hurt like heck, even if he was a pain in the butt. The other dogs are happier without him, so I guess it’s a good thing I finally bit the bullet. Or Giblett did. Here’s one of my favorite photos of him. He used to love disemboweling stuffies. Unfortunately, he also tried to unstuff me when he got the chance. He finally bit me once too often, and I had to get a tetanus shot and take antibiotics for that, and Giblett bit the dust:

 

 

Then I got a most ghastly case of bronchitis, which I’m still battling. On my second round of antibiotics, and I’m still playing merry melodies on my bronchial tubes. Sigh.

I’ll be giving away copies of SPIRITS UNEARTHED at the end of April.

Here are the wieners of March’s contest:

Lamar Jackson wins a copy SPIRITS ONSTAGE (in which Daisy has a marvelous time playing Katisha, the mean old nastypants in Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado).

Fred Holmes wins a copy of UNSETTLED SPIRITS (in which people keep dropping dead during communion services at Daisy’s church).

Sheila Deeth wins a copy of  BRUISED SPIRITS (in which Daisy and her friends save the life of a battered woman – this is based on a true story, by the way. The real woman lives in Australia).

And Sharon Sambuca wins a copy of SPIRITS UNITED, in which a dastardly plot at the California Institute of Technology (or Caltech, as it’s affectionately known) is foiled by Daisy and her gang. I think Sam’s Voodoo juju goes a bit wacky in this one, too.

A word about my monthly contests. I love giving my work to people; however, I found out quite by accident a few months ago that sending books to Great Britain, Australia, and other countries outside the United States is beyond my monetary capability. If a resident of a nation other than the United States has an e-reader, I’ll happily supply that person with an e-book. If a person doesn’t have an e-reader and still likes to read book-books, he or she is on his or her own. I’m sorry, but what I laughingly call my writing career hasn’t made me wealthy yet. And it probably won’t, but let’s not get in to that because it always depresses me. So. That’s that.

If you’d like to enter the contest to win a copy of SPIRITS UNEARTHED, just send me an email (alice@aliceduncan.net) and give me your name and home address. If you’d like to be added to my mailing list, you may do so on my web site (http://aliceduncan.net/) or email me (you won’t be smothered in e-mails, because I only write one blog a month, and that’s an effort). If you’d like to be friends on Facebook, visit my page at https://www.facebook.com/alice.duncan.925.

Thank you!

 

March

It’s March already! How come the older I get, the faster time flies? No need to answer that question. Anyone who’s old knows the feeling, and if you aren’t yet old, you will know it—with luck and survival skills.

Winners of February’s contest, which is whatever book you want as long as I have a copy, are: Alicia Carol, Linda Rorex, Rita Wray and ALICE DUNCAN! Yes! There’s another one! And she lives in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. She also claims to wear a kilt, but I haven’t seen proof of same yet. I’ll send you an e-book of your choice, Alice, since I can’t afford to send a real book. Alicia, Linda and Rita, please let me know which book you’d like, and I’ll send it to you. It may take me a while to do so (unless you want an e-book) I regret to say, because I’ve been a bit dilatory of late.

So. Here’s the fabulous cover of next month’s release, SPIRITS UNEARTHED, Daisy Gumm Majesty’s 12^th (actually, it’s her 13^th, but let’s not go into that again) adventure. Right below the cover is a link to purchase it for your Amazon Kindle or your B&N Nook:

 

 

Amazon Kindle link

 

B&N Nook link

 

February was kind of a dopey month. I got edits for SPIRITS UNEARTHED while I was sick, and I fear for the book’s reception and overall worth. I think it stinks, although I do hope I’m wrong. The cover is spectacular. Yes, Spike is a black-and-tan dachshund; red dachshunds show up better on book covers. Therefore, he’s red on the cover (by the way, red is dachshund-speak for brown). But his attitude on the cover is pure Spike, and he’s doing precisely what he does in the book to get the action started. Hope the rest of the book lives up to its cover. If you ever want to understand insecurity, go in for a writing career. Insecurity guaranteed, curse it.

Oh, and everyone else I know was sick in February, too. Basically, February was a sickly, sucky month. Fortunately, the hounds seem to be all right, even Giblett, my problem child, which doesn’t seem quite fair to me but what do I know?

Also, I got an invitation to attend my – this just makes me gasp with appalled-ness – 55^th high-school reunion. I swear, I don’t know how I got so old so fast. I wouldn’t mind the aging thing if it didn’t hurt so much, but oh, well. However, I’m going to attend. This is mainly because I’ll get to see Phyllis McKown and Janet Levine Goldberg, with whom I used to play flute in the Eliot Junior High School band in Altadena, California. I don’t think the three of us have been together since Eliot days! Egad. I only recently found out that neither Phyllis nor Janet considered herself a musician, but both merely sort of faked it. And here I thought we were all ardent flautists who practiced all the time (even though by doing so we made our dogs howl). Show’s how much anyone knows about anyone else when s/he’s a kid, huh? Also, it cleared up any doubt I might have had about why I was selected to be first-chair flute. Evidently, I was the only one who could play the instrument!

Anyway, now I’m in the process of writing Daisy’s 13^th (or 14^th) adventure, SHAKEN SPIRITS, in which Daisy has already been hit by a car and had her left shoulder dislocated. She’s recovering nicely, although she’s in a good deal of pain. The car that hit her was a 1923 Cole Sportster Sedan, quite a classy car. In fact, here it is! It’s not the real culprit. It’s the agent the real culprit used to whack poor Daisy. After he stole it from a grand estate in the San Rafael hills. Then he abandoned it on the Angeles Crest, the bounder:

 

 

Daisy’s going to miss choir practice for a couple of weeks, and she won’t be able to use the Ouija board or shuffle tarot cards for a while, but she’ll recover. I’m also relatively certain she and Sam will figure out who did the evil deed, why, and make certain whoever dunnit will never be able to do it again. If that made any sense.

Well, whatever. Let’s see now. What should I give away at the end of March? SPIRITS UNEARTHED comes out in April, so what I think I’ll do is give away one copy each of SPIRITS ONSTAGE (in which Daisy has a marvelous time playing Katisha, the mean old nastypants in Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado), UNSETTLED SPIRITS (in which people keep dropping dead during communion service at Daisy’s church), BRUISED SPIRITS (in which Daisy and her friends save the life of a battered woman – this is based on a true story, by the way. The woman lives in Australia), and SPIRITS UNITED, in which a dastardly plot at the California Institute of Technology (or Caltech as it’s affectionately known) is foiled by Daisy and her gang. I think Sam’s Voodoo juju goes a bit wacky in this one, too.

A word about my monthly contests. I love giving my work to people; however, I found out quite by accident a few months ago that sending books to Great Britain, Australia, and other countries outside the United States is beyond my monetary capability. If a resident of a nation other than the United States has an e-reader, I’ll happily supply that person with an e-book. If a person doesn’t have an e-reader and still likes to read book-books, he or she is on his or her own. I’m sorry, but what I laughingly call my writing career hasn’t made me wealthy yet. And it probably won’t, but let’s not get in to that because it always depresses me. So. That’s that.

If you’d like to enter the contest, just send me an email (alice@aliceduncan.net) and give me your name and home address. If you’d like to be added to my mailing list, you may do so on my web site (http://aliceduncan.net/) or email me (you won’t be smothered in e-mails, because I only write one blog a month, and that’s an effort). If you’d like to be friends on Facebook, visit my page at https://www.facebook.com/alice.duncan.925.

Thank you!