First of all, happy new year! In spite of all evidence and predictions to the contrary, we rang in 2013 last night. Which means we still have a chance to make this world a better place with what we do. I hope I’m accomplishing that by adding more books to it because I spent much of yesterday doing exactly that and my new book Ducks in a Row went live right about midnight last night. By the time anyone reads this, I’ll have the cover posted in the feature area to your left, but I’m very proud of this cover (designed by me), so I’ll post it here, too:

Okay, so that’s what I did yesterday, why did I do it? My former venture into the world of self-publishing may have won me critical acclaim, but it sure didn’t make me rich. And self-publishing a book, even the way I do it through Kindle Direct Program, is not an easy thing, and it is nerve-wracking. After all, my book was never professionally edited. My readers will have to do with my editing skills. Admittedly, I’m not totally untalented in that area, but even I will admit a professional editor adds a lot to my stories.

But I did it anyway. Why? My only answer…again…is that I love this story. I wanted it to be a book. And when I couldn’t find a publisher for it (it’s really more women’s fiction than romance and it leans toward the sweet instead of the spicy), I decided, what the hell? This story wants to be told. I want this story to be a book, but a book needs readers. I found some readers for Weeds and Flowers. A lot of them, actually. Maybe I can do the same for Ducks in a Row. At any rate, it’s worth a try.

Plus, since I designed the cover, I got to make my name pretty big. Nice, huh? I didn’t go Stephen King big for design reasons (I wanted everything linear on the cover because of the title), but it’s still pretty big… Still dreaming of the day when my name is bigger than the title itself.